Ml 

6   3   -^H^   7^n" 


BRARY 

IVaSlTY  OP 
AUFORNIA 


■ 


MOEALISM  AND  CHRISTIANITY; 


OK 


Man'B  (Bxptxkmt  anh   ^tBt\n^< 


IN     THREE     LECTURES, 


HENRY     JAMES 


NEW-YORK: 
J.     S.    REDFIELD. 

1850, 


lOAN  STACIt 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1850, 

BT  J.   S.   REDFIELD, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  Southern  District  of  New- York. 


31=ii:L3 


ADVERTISEMENT, 


The  first  of  the  three  following  Lectures, 
after  its  delivery  in  New- York,  was  put  in  its 
present  form  for  publication  in  the  "  Massa- 
chusetts Quarterly  Review,"  whence  it  is 
now  re-published  with  a  few  verbal  emenda- 
tions. The  second  Lecture  was  read  Nov.  1, 
1849,  before  the  Town  and  Country  Club, 
Boston,  and  is  here  slightly  enlarged.  The 
third  Lecture  was  read,  and  subsequently  re- 
peated at  the  request  of  several  gentlemen ,  in 
New- York  during  the  month  of  December, 
1849.  It  has  been  greatly  enlarged  for  pub- 
lication. The  topics  are  perhaps  somewhat 
difficult  from  their  novelty,  and  if  therefore  the 
writer  should  appear  to  have  treated  them  in- 
adequately, he  doubts  not  that  the  generous 
reader  will  allow  this  circumstance  its  due 
force  in  mitigation  of  judgment. 


095 


CONTENTS 


Page. 

LECTURE  I.  5 

A  Scientific  Statement    of    the  Christian   Doc- 
trine OF  THE  Lord,  or  Divine  Man. 

LECTURE  IL  39 

Socialism  and  Civilization    in    Relation    to  the 
Development  of  the  Individual  Life. 

LECTURE  IIL  97 

Morality  and  the  Perfect  Life, 


A  SCIENTIFIC  STATEMENT 


DOCTRINE    OF    THE    LORD. 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  the  Lord,  or  Divine 
Man,  rests  upon  this  fundamental  axiom,  t4iat  God 
alone  is  being,  or  life  in  Himself,  Man  is  notbeinty, 
but  onl}'^  a  subject  of  beinty,  only  a  form  or  image 
ofbeing^.  His  being  is  not  absolute,  but  pheno- 
menal, as  conditioned  in  space  and  time.  But 
God's  being  is  utterly  unconditioned  either  in  space 
or  time.  It  is  infinite,  not  as  comprehending  all 
space,  but  as  utterly  excluding  the  bare  conception 
of  space  ;  and  eternal,  not  as  comprehending  all 
time,  but  as  utterly  excluding  the  bare  conception 
of  time.  He  is  not  a  subject  of  being,  but  being 
itself,  and  therefore  the  sole  being. 

Consistently  with  this  fundamental  axiom,  we 
are  bound  to  deny  that  the  creature  of  God  has  any 
being  or  substance  in  himself.  The  substantial 
being  or  life  of  every  creature  is  God,  w^hile  the 
creature  is  but  a  form  or  image  of  God.     The  crea- 


6  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

ture  is  not  another  being  than  God,  nor  yet  is  he  an 
identical  being  with  God  ;  because  the  creature  is 
not  being  at  all,  but  only  a  shadow  or  reflection  of 
being.  You  would  not  call  the  shadow  of  the  tree 
on  the  ground  another  substance  than  the  tree  itself, 
nor  yet  the  same  substance,  for  the  reason  that  the 
shadow  is  not  any  substance  at  all,  but  merely  the 
image  of  a  substance.  So  man,  the  shadow  or 
image  of  God,  is  neither  a  different  being  from  God, 
nor  yet  an  identical  being,  because  he  is  not  any 
being  whatever,  but  only  the  reflection  of  being. 
Thus  God's  creature  is  without  any  being  or  sub- 
stance in  himself,  his  selfhood  being  nothing  more 
than  an  image  or  reflection  of  the  only  and  univer- 
sal being,  which  is  God.  The  internal  of  every 
man  is  God.  The  external,  or  that  which  defines 
the  man,  defines  his  self-consciousness,  is  only  a 
shadow  or  reflection  of  this  internal. 

These  things  being  granted,  which  they  must  be 
as  it  seems  to  the  writer,  unless  one  prefers  to  deny 
the  fact  of  creation,  it  follows  from  them  that  the 
universe  of  creation  is  a  vast  theatre  of  imagery  or 
correspondence.  If  God  be  the  sole  and  therefore 
universal  being,  his  universal  creature  can  be  no- 
thing more  and  nothing  less  than  His  image  or  sha- 
dow.    And  if  the  creature  be  only  the  image  or 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  7 

shadow  of  God,  then  creation  itself  is  not  the  origi- 
nation of  any  new  being  or  substance  on  the  part  of 
God,  but  only  the  revelation  or  imaging  forth  of  a 
being  which  is  eternal  and  unchangeable.  Thus  in 
the  light  of  the  principles  here  stated,  the  created 
universe  resolves  itself  both  in  whole  and  in  part 
into  an  imagery  or  correspondence  of  God,  and  the 
universal  science  consequently,  or  the  science  of 
sciences,  becomes  the  science  of  correspondence. 

If  now  all  this  be  true,  if  it  be  true  that  crea- 
tion can  be  nothing  more  and  nothing  less  than  the 
revealinGf  or  imao:inGf  forth  of  God,  then  some  mo- 
mentous  results  immediately  ensue  to  our  theology 
and  philosophy.  Primarily  it  results  that  the  true 
creature  of  God  is  not  finite,  cannot  be  compre- 
hended within  the  laws  of  space  and  time.  For  as 
the  creature  is  only  an  image  or  reflection  of  God, 
and  as  God  being  eternal  and  infinite  is  utterly  ig- 
norant both  of  time  and  space,  so  His  true  creature 
cannot  be  finited  by  these  conditions.  Thus  the  life 
of  nature,  or  that  life  which  lies  within  the  laws  of 
space  and  time,  does  not  image  God.  The  only 
life  which  does  image  Him  consequently  is  one  that 
transcends  these  laws,  being  a  spiritual  life,  and 
this  life  belongs  exclusively  to  man. 

But  in  order  to  justify  this  affirmation,  it  is  neces- 


8  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

sary  to  state  what  we  mean  by  spirit  as  distin- 
guished from  sensible  nature.  In  speaking  of  the 
spirit  of  a  thing  in  contradistinction  to  the  sensible 
thing  itself,  nothing  else  is  meant  than  its  distinct- 
ive genius,  or  faculty  of  operation.  For  example, 
the  horse  is  an  outward  form  discernible  by  my 
senses  from  all  other  natural  forms.  But  there  is 
something  more  in  the  horse  than  meets  my  eye, 
namely,  a  certain  faculty  or  capacity  of  use,  which 
constitutes  his  distinctive  spirit  or  genius,  and  is 
cognizable  only  by  the  eye  of  my  understanding. 
Thus  what  is  spiritual  about  the  horse  is  what  lies 
within  his  material  form,  and  constitutes  his  power 
or  faculty  of  use.  This  faculty  is  different  in  the 
horse  from  what  it  is  in  every  other  animal,  the 
cow,  the  sheep,  the  ox,  the  lion,  the  elephant,  etc. 
Take  another  example  from  the  sphere  of  the  arts. 
My  hat  is  an  artificial  form  sensibly  distinct  from 
all  other  forms.  But  this  outward  or  sensible  form 
of  the  hat  does  not  exist  by  itself.  It  embodies  a 
certain  use  or  function,  namely  the  protection  of  my 
head,  which  use  or  function  constitutes  its  spirit. 
In  short  the  spirit  of  a  thing  is  the  end  or  use  for 
which  it  exists.  Thus  you  may  take  the  whole 
range  either  of  nature  or  the  arts,  and  you  will  find 
everything  existing  for  a  certain  use  beyond   itself, 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  » 

which  use  is  the  spiritual  ground  or  justification  of 
its  existence.  Nature  is  properly  nothing  more  than 
the  robe  or  garment  of  spirit.  It  is  only  the  taber- 
nacle or  house  of  spirit,  only  the  subservient  instru- 
ment or  means  by  which  spirit  subsists  and  be- 
comes conscious.  Every  thing  in  nature,  without 
any  the  most  insignificant  exception,  embodies  an 
internal  use  or  capacity  of  operation,  which  consti- 
tutes its  peculiar  spirit.  Deprive  it  of  this  internal 
use  or  capacity,  not  only  actually  or  for  a  limited 
lime,  but  potentially  or  for  ever,  and  you  deprive  it 
of  life.  Exhaust  the  power  of  the  horse  to  bear  a 
burden  and  draw  a  load,  of  the  cow  to  produce  milk, 
of  the  sheep  to  produce  wool,  of  the  tree  to  produce 
fruit  or  seed,  and  you  at  the  same  time  consign  them 
all  to  death.  For  death,  or  the  departure  of  the 
spirit  from  the  body,  means  in  every  case  the  ces- 
sation of  the  subject's  capacity  of  use.  Thus  na- 
ture in  all  its  departments  is  merely  the  vehicle  or 
minister  of  spirit.  Its  true  sphere  is  that  of  entire 
subjection  to  spirit,  and  never  since  the  world  began 
has  an  instance  occurred  of  its  failing  to  exhibit  the 
most  complete  acquiescence  in  this  subjection. 

But  if  this  spiritual  force  reside  in  Nature,  what 
hinders  any  natural  form  being  a  true  revelation  or 
image  of  God  ?     If,  for  example,  the  horse  possess  a 


10  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

spiritual  substratum,  why  does  not  the  horse  image 
God  ?  The  reason  is  obvious.  The  spirit  of  the 
horse  is  not  his  own  spirit.  He  is  entirely  uncon- 
scious of  it.  He  performs  incessant  uses  to  man, 
but  does  not  perform  them  of  himself.  His  end  is 
external  to  himself.  The  object  of  his  actions  does 
not  fall  within  his  own  subjectivity.  The  spirit  of 
universal  nature  is  a  spirit  of  subjection  to  some  ex- 
ternal power.  It  never  manifests  itself  spontane- 
ously, but  always  in  obeisance  to  some  outward 
constraint.  Thus  the  horse  does  not  spontaneously 
place  himself  in  the  harness.  The  cow  does  not 
come  to  your  dairy,  to  make  a  spontaneous  surren- 
der of  her  milk.  The  sheep  feels  no  spontaneous 
impulsion  to  deposit  his  fleece  at  your  door.  Nor 
does  the  tree  inwardly  shake  itself  in  order  to  sup- 
ply you  with  apples.  In  short  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  a  spiritual  horse — cow — sheep — or  apple 
tree. 

Sic  vos  non  vobls  nidificatis  aves, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  vellera  fertis  oves, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  mellificatis  apes, 
Sic  vos  non  vobis  fertis  aratra  boves. 

No,  all  these  performances  are  for  the  benefit  of 
man.  The  whole  realm  of  nature  is  destitute  of  a 
spiritual  consciousness,  of  such  a  consciousness  as 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  11 

elevates  any  of  its  forms  to  the  dignity  of  a  person. 
No  animal  is  conscious  of  a  selfhood  distinct  from 
its  outward  or  natural  limitations.  No  animal  is 
capable  of  suicide,  or  the  renunciation  of  its  outer 
life,  on  the  ground  of  its  no  longer  fulfilling  the  as- 
piration of  its  inner  life.  Thus  nature  is  destitute 
of  any  proper  personality.  The  only  personality  it 
recognizes  is  man.  To  him  all  its  uses  tend.  Him 
all  its  powers  obey.  To  his  endowment  and  supre- 
macy it  willingly  surrenders  itself,  and  finds  life  in 
the  surrender.  Take  away  man  accordingly,  and 
nature  remains  a  clod,  utterly  spiritless — imper- 
sonal— dead. 

Thus  nature  does  not  image  or  reveal  God.  For 
God's  activity  is  not  imposed.  It  is  spontaneous, 
or  self-generated.  It  flows  from  Himself  exclusive- 
ly, and  ignores  all  outward  motive.  Hence  God's 
true  creature  or  image  is  bound  above  all  things  to 
exhibit  that  power  of  self-derived  or  spontaneous 
action  which  constitutes  our  idea  of  the  divine  per- 
sonahty. 

Accordingly  it  is  man  alone  who  fulfills  this  re- 
quisition. Man- alone  possesses  personality,  or  the 
power  of  self-derived  action.  Personality,  the 
quality  of  being  a  person,  means  simply  the  power 
of  self-derived  or  supernatural  action,  the  power  of 


12  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

originating  one's  own  action,  or,  what  is  the  same 
thing,  of  acting  according  to  one's  own  sovereign 
pleasure.     It  means  a  power  of  acting  unlimited  by 
any  thing  but  the  will  of  the  subject.     Thus,  in  as- 
cribing personality  to  God,  we  do  not  mean  to  assert 
for  him  certain  bodily  limitations  palpable  to  sense, 
which  would  be  absurd  ;  we  mean  merely  to  assert 
His  self-sufficiency  or  infinitude — His  power  to  act 
according   to   his    own  sovereign  pleasure.      We 
mean,  in  plain  English,  to  assert  that  He  is  the  ex- 
clusive source  of  His  own  actions.     So  also,  in  as- 
cribing personality  to  man   and  denying  it  to  the 
horse,  we  mean  to  assert  that  man  possesses  the 
power  of  supernatural  or  infinite  action,  the  power 
of  acting  independently  of  all  natural  constraint,  and 
according  to  his  own  individual  or  private  attract- 
tion,  while  the  horse  has    not  this  power.     Man's 
action,  when  it  is  truly  personal,  has  its  source  in 
himself,  in  his  own  private  tastes  or  attractions,  as 

f  contra-distinguished  on  the  one  hand  from  his  phy- 
sical necessities,  and  on  the  other  from  his  social 

^obligations  ;  therefore  we  affirm  man's  personality, 
or  his  absolute  property  in  his  actions.  Nature's 
action  has  not  its  source  in  any  interior  self,  but  in 
some  outward  and  constraining  power ;  therefore 
we  deny  nature  any  personahty,  any  absolute  pro- 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  13 

perty  iii-  its  actions.  Wlien  the  fire  burns  my 
incautious  finger,  I  do  not  blame  the  fire,  and  why? 
Because  I  feel  that  the  fire  acts  in  strict  obedience 
to  its  nature,  which  is  that  of  subjection  to  me,  and 
that  I  alone  have  been  in  fault,  therefore,  for  re- 
versing this  relation  and  foolishly  subjecting  myself 
to  it. 

But  now,  if  personality  impl}^  the  power  of  self- 
derived  or  spontaneous  action,  then  it  is  manifest 
that  this  power  supposes  in  the  subject  a  composite 
self-hood.  It  supposes  its  subject  to  possess  an  in- 
ternal or  spiritual  self  as  the  end  or  object  of  the  ac- 
tion, and  an  external  or  natural  self  as  its  means  or 
instrument.  For  clearly,  when  you  attribute  any 
action  to  me  personally,  or  affirm  my  exclusive  pro- 
perty in  it,  you  do  not  mean  to  affirm  that  it  was 
prompted  by  my  nature,  that  nature  which  is  com- 
mon to  me  and  all  other  men,  but  by  my  private 
taste  or  inclination.  You  hold  that  I  have  some  in- 
ternal end,  some  private  object  to  gratify  by  it,  and 
thereupon  you  declare  the  action  mine.  I  repeat, 
then,  that  personality,  or  the  power  of  self-derived 
action,  supposes  a  dual  or  composite  selfhood  in  the  ^  4^ 
subject,  a  selfhood  composed  of  two  elements,  one  /^, 
internal,  spiritual,  or  private,  the  other  external,  >^ 
natural,  or  public. 


14  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Personality,  or  the  power 
of  self-derived  action,  not  only  supposes  this  com- 
posite selfhood  in  the  subject,  not  only  supposes 
him  to  possess  an  internal  self,  and  an  external  self, 
but  it  also  supposes  that  these  two  shall  be  perfect- 
ly united  in  every  action  which  is  properly  called 
his.  For  example,  I  perform  a  certain  action  which 
you  pronounce  mine,  on  the  ground  of  its  having 
visibly  proceeded  from  my  hand.  Now  I  say,  this 
is  not  sufficient  to  prove  the  action  absolutely  mine. 
In  order  to  prove  it  absolutely  mine,  you  must  not 
only  show  that  it  was  done  by  my  hand  or  my  ex- 
ternal self,  but  also  that  this  external  self  did  not  at 
the  time  dominate  or  overrule  my  internal  self.  If 
the  two  elements  of  my  personality  were  not  per- 
fectly united,  perfectly  concurrent,  in  the  action  ;  if 
the  internal  self  were  overruled  by  the  external,  or 
vice  versa  ;  then  the  action  is  not  truly  mine,  is  not 
a  legitimate  progeny  of  my  will  and  understanding, 
but  a  bastard  or  Jilius  nullius,  abhorred  of  God  and 
man. 

Let  me  precisely  illustrate  my  meaning  by  a  case 
in  point.  A  certain  man  is  murdered  by  me.  You 
witness  the  deed  and  denounce  me  as  the  murderer. 
On  my  trial  it  is  proved  that  the  deceased  stood  in 
the  way  of  a  certain  inheritance  coming  to  me  ; 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  15 

that  I  had  exhibited  various  marks  of  vexation  at 
this  circumstance,  and  had  been  heard  to  wish  him 
out  of  the  way,  and  even  threaten  to  remove  him 
myself.  Your  direct  testimon}'-,  backed  by  such 
evidence  as  to  m}'  state  of  mind  with  regard  to  the 
deceased,  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  my  actual  guilt.  I 
am  accordingly  convicted  and  hanged.  For  all  that 
the  community  wants  to  know  is,  which  of  its  mem- 
bers actually  committed  the  deed,  that  knowing 
this  they  may  proceed  to  avenge  it.  The  care  of 
the  state  extends  only  to  the  outward  or  public  life 
of  its  members,  not  to  their  inner  or  private  inter- 
ests. In  making  inquisition  into  the  murder,  it  has 
no  desire  to  decide  as  to  my  interior  or  spiritual  con- 
dition ;  this  it  leaves  to  God,  who  sees  the  heart.  It 
only  seeks  to  know  the  actual  perpetrator,  that  it 
may  not  punish  the  innocent  for  the  guilty.  Thus, 
in  pronouncing  the  murderous  deed  mine,  it  does 
not  mean  to  say  that  it  pertains  to  me  spiritually, 
but  only  outwardly  or  visibly;  pertains  to  me, 
A.  B.,  as  outwardly  distinguished  from  C.  D.,  E.  F., 
and  the  rest.  To  outward  view,  then,  or  in  man's 
sight,  the  action  is  doubtless  mine,  and  I  submit 
my  body  to  man's  law.  But  now,  admitting  the 
deed  to  be  thus  far  mine,  admitting  that  I  actually 
slew  the  man,  and  am  therefore  responsible  to  the 


16  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

extent  of  my  natural  life  ;  is  this  deed  necessarily 
mine  to  inward  view  also,  or  in  God's  sight? 

I  unhesitatingly  say,  No,  and  for  this  reason, that 
my  internal  or  spiritual  self  and  my  external  or  na- 
tural self,  did  not  really  wiite  in  it,  but  the  former 
was  overruled  by  the  latter  ?  How  "  overruled  ?" 
I  will  show  you. 

Suppose  me  very  much  to  dislike  living  in  Ger- 
many, or  any  other  of  the  old  European  states. 
The  language,  the  manners,  and  the  customs  of  the 
country,  are  all  foreign  to  my  habit,  and  I  do  not 
spontaneously  make  my  abode  in  it.  But  I  am 
poor,  with  very  few  resources  against  natural  want, 
and  I  hear  of  a  fortune  being  left  me  in  Germany, 
on  condition  of  my  going  there  to  reside.  I  accord- 
ingly go.  Now  in  this  case  my  private  or  spiritual 
repugnance  to  this  step  was  overruled  by  my  natu- 
ral necessities.  If  I  had  enjoyed  an  ample  supply 
of  these  necessities,  I  should  not  have  gone.  My 
spiritual  aversion  to  the  step  would  not  have  allow- 
ed it.  But  I  was  absolutely  destitute  of  provision 
for  my  natural  wants,  save  at  the  expense  of  abject 
toil,  which  a  man  hates,  and  it  was  this  outward  or 
natural  destitution,  which  constrained  my  spirit  in- 
to obedience.  Thus  my  spirit  was  overruled  or  do- 
minated by  my  flesh,  and  the   result  consequently 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  17 

is  that  though  to  outward  appearance  or  in  man's 
sight  I  am  in  Germany,  yet  in  reality  or  in  God's 
sight  I  am  still  in  America — that  though  my  body  is 
in  Germany,  my  spirit  is  a  thousand  leagues  away. 
This  example  illustrates  what  I  mean  by  "  over- 
ruling "  in  the  case  of  the  murder.  I  say  that  the 
action  in  this  case,  though  apparently  mine  or  mine 
in  man's  sight,  as  having  been  performed  by  my 
hand,  was  yet  not  really  or  spiritually  mine,  was 
not  mine  in  God's  sight,  because  in  doing  it  my 
spirit  was  ov'crruled  b}'-  my  nature,  and  did  not 
yield  a  spontaneous  concurrence.  I  desired  a  cer- 
tain inheritance  capable  of  relieving  me  from  press- 
ing natural  w^ant.  The  longer  1  felt  the  want,  the 
more  urgent  grew  my  desire  for  that  which  would 
relieve  it,  until  at  last  it  overcame  my  internal  or 
spiritual  repugnance  to  murder  so  far  as  to  allow  me 
to  slay  him,  who  alone  stood  in  the  way  of  its  gra- 
tification, lam  not  attempting  to  palliate  the  enor- 
mity of  the  act.  It  is  perfectly  detestable  in  itself,  and 
will  alwa3^s  be  so.  I  merely  deny  that  my  spirit 
and  my  flesh  were  one  in  it,  which  unity  is  neces- 
sary in  every  act  that  is  spiritually  mine.  I  merely 
assert  that  my  spirit  was  overruled  by  my  flesh  to  do 
this  evil  thing.  The  flesh  gathering  potency  from 
want,  from  actual   destitution,  overruled   or   con- 


18  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

Strained  the  spirit  to  its  ends,  and  the  action  conse- 
quently, instead  of  being  really  or  spiritually  mine, 
is  referable  exclusively  to  what  the  theologians  call 
a  depraved  nature,  meaning  thereby  a  nature  dis- 
united or  inharmonic  with  spirit.  The  universal 
heart  of  man  ratifies  this  judgment,  or  acquits  me 
spiritually  of  the  deed,  when  it  commends  me  to  the 
mercy  of  God.  You  have  forfeited  man's  mercy, 
say  they  ;  betake  yourself,  therefore,  to  that  of  God, 
which  is  infinite,  or  open  to  all  degrees  of  de- 
filement. 

No  one  dares  forbid  me,  all  red  as  I  am  with  my 
brother's  blood,  from  hoping  in  God.  This  is  a  fact 
full  of  meaning.  The  meaning  of  it  is  that  we  do  not 
believe  any  man  to  be  evil  at  bottom  or  in  his  in- 
most heart,  but  only  from  a  lack  of  outward  freedom. 
The  meaning  of  it  is  that  we  consider  none  of  our 
judgments  final,  since  they  extend  only  to  appear- 
ances, but  look  to  have  them  overruled  and  correct- 
ed by  Him  who  sees  the  inmost  heart,  and  judges 
therefore  according  to  the  reality.  A  divine  instinct, 
in  truth,  in  every  soul  of  man,  continually  derides 
all  our  criminality  as  transient  or  unreal,  so  that  no 
criminal  ever  shows  himself  so  black  as  to  make  us 
feel  that  he  is  beyond  God's  power  to  bless.  No 
s^jrnan  does  evil  save  from  the  stress  of  nature  or  so- 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  19 

ciety,  save  from  a  false  position  with  respect  to  his 
own  body  or  to  his  fellow-man.  Accordingly  we 
never  hesitate  to  consign  the  worst  of  criminals  to 
the  boundless  clemency  of  God.  If  we  really  be- 
lieved the  man  to  be  bad  in  himself,  bad  independ- 
ently of  his  physical  and  social  conditions,  we  should 
never  dare  send  him  to  God.  We  should  do  all  in 
our  power  to  hide  him  from  God,  as  from  a  devour- 
ing pestilence. 

Here  let  us  pause  a  moment  to  survey  the  ground 
we  have  traversed.  We  have  seen  that  creation  is 
but  the  revelation  or  imaging  forth  of  the  divine  per- 
sonality. We  have  consequently  seen  that  nature 
is  incompetent  to  this  revelation,  because  nature  is 
destitute  of  personality,  destitute  of  power  to  origi- 
nate its  own  action.  And  finally  we  have  seen  that 
man  is  the  only  competent  revelation  or  image  of 
God,  because  man  alone  possesses  personality.  So 
far  we  have  attained. 

But  now,  from  the  definition  given  of  personality,^ 
it  is  manifest  that  it  is  to  be  ascribed  to  man  only  in  1 
his  veryjnmostjor  highest  development,  and  not  atj 
all  in  his  physical  or  social  relations.     For  person- 
ality, when  applied  to  any  subject,  affirms  the  sub- 
ject's  infinitude    or   perfection,    affirms,    in  other 


20  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

words,  the  subject's  entire  sufficiency  unto  himself; 
It  affirms  his  self-sufficiency  or  perfection,  because 
it  implies  the  power  of  originating  his  own  action. 
He  who  has  power  to  originate  his  own  action  is 
sufficient  unto  himself,  and  to  be  sufficient  unto 
oneself  is  to  be  infinite  or  perfect.  Infinitude  or 
perfection  means  self-sufficiency.  I  admit  the 
words  are  often  used  by  rote,  or  without  any  defi- 
nite intention.  But  whenever  they  are  used  intel- 
ligently, they  are  designed  to  express  the  subject's 
self-sufficiency.  We  can  form  no  conception  of  the 
divine  infinitude  or  perfection  other  than  is  express- 
ed by  saying  that  He  is  sufficient  unto  Himself 
And  if  we  further  ask  ourselves  what  we  mean  by 
His  being  sufficient  unto  Himself,  we  reply  instinct- 
ively that  we  mean  to  express  His  power  to  origi- 
nate his  own  action.  This  power,  which  is  inherent 
in  God,  is  the  basis  of  His  personality  or  character, 
is  that  thing,  without  which  to  our  conception  He 
would  not  be  God,  that  is,  would  not  be  infinite  or 
perfect.  Had  He  not  this  power  He  would  be  finite 
or  imperfect.  His  power,  like  that  of  nature,  would 
be  limited  by  something  external  to  Himself. 

If,  therefore,  personality,  when  applied  to  any 
subject,  expresses  his  infinitude  or  perfection,  ex- 
presses his  self-sufficiency,  it  is  manifest  as  was 
said  before,  that  it  cannot  be  applied  to  maa-  in 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  21 

every  aspect  of  his  subjectivity,  namely,  as  a  sul> 
ject  either  of  nature  or  of  his  fellow-man,  but  only 
in  his  very  highest  aspect,  which  is  that  of  a  divine 
subject.  For  man's  highest  or  inmost  subjection  is 
a  subjection  to  God,  which  lifts  him  entirely  beyond 
the  sphere  of  necessity  or  duty,  and  indeed  enables 
him,  if  need  be,  to  lay  off  the  bodily  life  and  the 
friendship  of  men  as  easily  as  belays  off  his  garments 
at  night.  This  subjection  of  man  to  God  is  involved 
in  the  very  relation  of  Creator  and  creature.  For 
the  Creator  being  essential  life,  life  in  itself,  'cannot 
communicate  life,  save  b}''  communicating  Himself 
to  the  creature.  And  He  cannot  communicate  Him- 
self, save  in  so  far  as  the  creature  be  made  recep- 
tive, which  receptivity  becomes  effected  by  means 
of  the  creature's  natural  and  moral  experience,  the 
issue  of  which  is  to  exalt  him  above  nature  and 
above  society,  endowing  him  with  the  lordship  or 
supremacy  of  the  external  universe.  Man's  natural 
activity  degrades  or  obscures  his  personality.  It  is 
not  spontaneous — does  not  originate  in  his  internal 
self,  but  in  a  mere  necessity  of  his  nature  common 
to  all  its  partakers.  Instead  of  expressing  his  dis- 
tinctive personality,  therefore,  it  expresses  a  com- 
mon property  of  all  men.  Regarded  as  a  subject  of 
nature,  therefore,  man  lacks  personality,  lacks  at 
least  all  such  personality  as  reflects  the    divine. 


/Zt/y*.-*/*^    -      ilA^^A'w*.**^*''*^ 


22  THPJ    DIVINE    MAN. 

His  moral  subjectivity  presents  a  similar  fatal  de- 
fect. Morality  covers  my  relations  to  society  or  my 
fellow-man.  Thus,  as  my  natural  action  is  condi- 
tioned upon  a  law  of  necessity,  or  of  subjection  to 
nature,  so  my  moral  action  is  conditioned  upon  a 
law  of  duty,  or  of  subjection  to  my  fellow-man.  I 
act  morally  only  in  so  far  as  I  act  under  obligation 
to  others,  being  morally  good  when  I  practically  ac- 
knowledge, and  morally  evil  when  I  practically 
(deny,  this  obhgation.  Thus  morality  displays  me 
!  in  subjection  not  to  God,  but  to  society  or  my  fel- 
/  low-man,  and  thus  equally  with  nature  denies  me 
proper  personality.  For  personality  implies  the 
subject's  absolute  property  in  his  action,  which  pro- 
perty is  impossible  unless  the  subject  constitute  also 
the  object  of  the  action,  or,  in  other  words,  unless 
the  object  of  the  action  fall  mthin,  be  internal  to,  the 
subject's  self,  and  this  condition  is  violated  when  I 
act  not  to  please  m3'self,  but  to  please  my  fellow- 
man.  Hence  neither  man's  natural  nor  his  moral 
action  confers  a  divine  or  perfect  personality  on  him. 
The  former  does  not,  because  it  displays  him  in  sub- 
jection to  nature.  The  latter  does  not,  because  it 
displays  him  in  subjection  to  his  fellow-man.  Both 
the  moral  and  natural  man  are  imperfect.  Both 
fail  to  exhibit  that  balanced  or  self-centred  action, 


THE  DIVINE    MAN.  23 

which  is  the  exclusive  basis  of  personahty,  and  both 
alike  consequently  fail  to  express  the  divine  man, 
or  accomplish  the  divine  image  in  humanity. 

But  here  it  may  be  asked  whether  benevolence 
does  not  confer  personality.  Decidedly  not,  for 
the  reason  that  benevolent  action  is  not  spontaneous 
but  purely  sympathetic.  Personal  action — all  ac- 
tion which  warrants  the  ascription  of  personality  to 
the  subject — is  of  necessity  spontaneous,  or  inward- 
ly begotten.  I  say  of  necessity,  because  action 
which  is  outwardly  begotten,  or  originates  in  some- 
thing foreign  to  the  subject,  does  not  pertain  to  him 
absolutely  but  only  partially,  pertains  to  him  only 
as  he  stands  involved  in  nature  or  society.  Now 
sympathetic  action  evidently  falls  under  this  latter 
category,  being  begotten  not  from  within  but  from 
without  the  subject's  self,  as  the  etymology  of  the 
word  indicates.  It  supposes  a  want  on  the  part  of 
somebody  not  the  subject,  disposing  the  latter  to  re- 
lieve it.  If,  therefore,  you  take  away  suffering  from 
all  others,  you  take  from  the  benevolent  subject  all 
power  of  action.  And  surely  no  one  will  consider 
that  as  a  divine  or  perfect  personality,  whose 
power  of  action  is  controlled  by  circumstances  fo- 
reign to  itself. 

Thus  the  fundamental  requisite  of  personality, 


24  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

namely,  that  it  attest  the  subject's  self-sufficiency 
or  perfection  b}^  exhibiting  in  him  the  power  of 
self-derived  action,  is  necessarily  made  void  in  all 
purely  benevolent  action.  And  the  inevitable  con- 
clusion therefore  is,  that  the  benevolent  man,  as 
such,  does  not  possess  true  personality,  or  is  in- 
competent to  image  God. 

Who,  then,  is  the  true  divine  man  ?  Who  of  all 
mankind  possesses  personality,  and  thus  constitutes 
the  image  of  God  in  creation?  Evidently  it  must 
be  some  one  who  unites  in  himself,  or  harmonizes, 
all  these  finite  or  imperfect  men.  For  the  divine 
man  does  not  exclude  the  natural  man,  nor  the  mo- 
ral man,  nor  the  sympathetic  man,  nor  any  other 
phasis  of  humanity.  These  are  all  constituent  ele- 
ments of  the  human  nature,  and  the  perfect  man  is 
bound  not  to  exclude  but  accept  them,  blending  and 
reconciling  all  in  his  own  infinite  manhood,  in  his 
own  unitary  self.  These  men  are  the  geometric 
Stones  of  the  divine  edifice  of  humanity  ;  they  are 
by  no  means  the  edifice  itself,  but  its  indispensable 
material,  and  he  therefore  who  should  attempt  to 
construct  the  edifice  to  their  exclusion,  would  ne- 
cessarily have  his  work  about  his  ears. 

Who,  then,  is  the  perfect  or  divine  man,  the  man 
who  actually  reconciles  in  himself  all  the  conflicting 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  25 

elements  of  humanity  ?     Is  any  such  man  actually 
extant?     If  so,  where  shall  we  find  him? 

We  find  him  in  the  aesthetic  man,  or  Artist.  But 
now  observe  that  when  I  speak  of  the  aesthetic  man 
or  Artist,  I  do  not  mean  the  man  of  any  specific 
function,  as  the  poet,  painter,  or  musician.  I  mean 
the  man  of  whatsoever  function,  who  in  fulfilling  it 
obeys  his  own  inspiration  or  taste,  uncontrolled  ei- 
ther by  his  physical  necessities  or  his  social  obliga- 
tions. He  alone  is  the  Artist, 'whatever  be  his  ma- 
nifest vocation,  whose  action  obeys  his  own  internal 
taste  or  attraction,  uncontrolled  either  by  necessity 
or  duty.  The  action  may  perfectly  consist  both 
wdth  necessity  and  duty  ;  that  is  to  say,  it  may 
practically  promote  both  his  physical  and  social 
welfare  ;  but  these  must  not  be  its  animating  prin- 
ciples, or  he  sinks  at  once  from  the  Artist  into  the 
artisan.  The  artisan  seeks  to  gain  a  livelihood  or 
secure  an  honorable  name.  He  works  for  bread, 
or  for  fame,  or  for  both  together.  The  Artist  abhors 
these  ends,  and  works  only  to  show  forth  that  im- 
mortal beauty  whose  presence  constitutes  his  inmost 
soul.  He  is  vowed  to  Beauty  as  the  bride  is  vowed 
to  the  husband,  and  beauty  reveals  herself  to  him 
only  as  he  is  true  to  his  inmost  soul,  only  as  he 
obeys  his  spontaneous  taste  or  attraction. 


26  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

The  reason  accordingly  why  the  painter,  the 
poet,  the  musician,  and  so  forth,  have  so  long  mo- 
nopolized the  name  of  Artist,  is,  not  because  Art  is 
identical  with  these  forms  of  action,  for  it  is  iden- 
.tical  with  no  specific  forms,  but  simply  because  the 
poet,  painter,  and  so  forth,  more  than  any  other 
men,  have  thrown  off  the  tyranny  of  nature  and 
custom,  and  followed  the  inspirations  of  genius,  the 
inspirations  of  beauty,  in  their  own  souls.  These 
men  to  some  extent  have  sunk  the  service  of  nature 
and  society  in  the  obedience  of  their  own  private 
attractions.  They  have  merged  the  search  of  the 
good  and  the  true  in  that  of  the  beautiful,  and  have 
consequently  announced  a  divinity  as  yet  unan- 
nounced either  in  nature  or  society.  To  the  ex- 
tent of  their  consecration,  they  are  priests  after  the 
order  of  Melchisedec,  that  is  to  say,  a  priesthood, 
which,  not  being  made  after  the  law  of  a  carnal 
commandment,  shall  never  pass  away.  And  they 
are  kings,  who  reign  by  a  direct  unction  from  the 
Highest.  But  the  priest  is  not  the  altar,  but  the 
servant  of  the  altar;  and  the  king  is  not  the  Highest, 
but  the  servant  of  the  Highest.  So  painting,  poetr^^ 
is  not  Art,  but  the  servant  and  representative  of 
Art.  Art  is  divine,  universal,  infinite.  It  therefore 
exacts  to  itself  infinite  forms  or  manifestations,  here 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  27 

in  the  painter,  there  in  the  actor  ;  here  in  the  musi- 
cian, there  in  the  machinist;  here  in  the  architect, 
there  in  the  dancer  ;  here  in  the  poet,  there  in  the 
costumer.  We  do  not  therefore  call  the  painter  or 
poet.  Artist,  because  painting  or  poetry  is  a  whit 
more  essential  to  Art  than  ditching  is,  but  simply 
because  the  painter  and  poet  have  more  frequently 
exhibited  the  hfe  of  Art  by  means  of  a  hearty  in- 
subjection  to  nature  and  convention. 

When,  therefore,  I  call  the  divine  man,  or  God's 
image  in  creation,  by  the  name  of  Artist,  the  reader 
will  not  suppose  me  to  mean  the  poet,  painter,  or 
any  other  special  form  of  man.  On  the  contrary, 
he  will  suppose  me  to  mean  that  infinite  and  spi- 
ritual man  whom  all  these  finite  functionaries  repre- 
sent indeed,  but  whom  none  of  them  constitutes, 
namel3%the  man  who  in  every  visible  form  of  action 
acts  always  from  his  inmost  self,  or  from  attraction, 
and  not  from  necessity  or  duty.  I  mean  the  man 
who  is  a  law  unto  himself,  and  ignores  all  outward  al- 
legiance, whether  to  nature  or  society.  This  man 
may  indeed  have  no  technical  vocation  whatever, 
such  as  poet,  painter,  and  the  like,  and  yet  he  will 
be  none  the  less  sure  to  announce  himself.  The 
humblest  theatre  of  action  furnishes  him  a  platform. 
I  pay  m}^  waiter  so  much  a  day  for  putting  my  din- 


28  THE    DIVINE    MAX. 

ner  on  the  table.  But  he  performs  his  function  in 
a  way  so  entirely  sul  generis,  with  so  exquisite  an 
attention  to  beauty  in  all  the  details  of  the  service, 
with  so  symmetrical  an  arrangement  of  the  dishes, 
and  so  even  an  adjustment  of  every  thing  to  its  own 
place,  and  to  the  hand  that  needs  it,  as  to  shed  an 
almost  epic  dignity  upon  the  repast,  and  convert 
one's  habitual  "  grace  before  meat"  into  a  sponta- 
neous tribute,  instinct  with  a  divine  recognition. 

The  charm  in  this  case  is  not  that  the  dinner  is 
all  before  me,  where  the  man  is  bound  by  his  wa- 
ges to  place  it.  This  every  waiter  I  have  had  has 
done  just  as  punctually  as  this  man.  No,  it  is  ex- 
clusively the  way  in  which  it  is  set  before  me,  a 
\vay  altogether  peculiar  to  this  man,  which  attests 
that  in  doing  it  he  is  not  thinking  cither  of  earning 
his  wages,  or  doing  his  duty  towards  me,  but  only 
of  satisfying  his  own  conception  of  beauty  with  the 
resources  before  him.  The  consequence  is  that  the 
pecuniary  relation  between  us  merges  in  a  higher 
one.  He  is  no  longer  the  menial,  but  my  equal  or 
superior,  so  that  I  have  felt,  when  entertaining  doc- 
tors of  divinity  and  law,  and  discoursing  about  di- 
vine mysteries,  that  a  living  epistle  was  circulating 
behind  our  backs,  and  quietly  ministering  to  our 
wants,  far  more  apocalyptic  to  an  enlightened  eye 
than  any  yet  contained  in  books. 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  29 

The  reader  may  deem  the  illustration  beneath 
the  dignity  of  the  subject.  The  more  the  pity 
for  him  in  that  case,  since  it  is  evident  ibat  his  eyes 
have  been  fixed  upon  the  shov^^s  of  things,  rather 
than  upon  the  enduring  substance.  It  is  not  indeed 
a  dignified  thing  to  wait  upon  tables.  There  is  no 
dignity  in  any  labor  which  is  constrained  by  one's 
necessities.  But  still  no  function  exists  so  abject  or 
servile  as  utterly  to  quench  the  divine  or  personal 
element  in  it.  It  will  make  itself  manifest  in  all  of 
them,  endowing  them  all  with  an  immortal  grace, 
and  redeeming  the  subject  from  the  dominion  of 
mere  nature  and  custom. 

But  whether  the  illustrnlion  be  mean  or  not,  it  is 
fully  to  the  point.  The  divine  hfe  in  every  man, 
the  life  which  is  the  direct  inspiration  of  God,  and 
therefore  exactly  images  God,  consists  in  the  obe- 
dience of  one's  own  taste  or  attraction,  where  one's 
taste  or  attraction  is  uncontrolled  by  necessity  or 
duty,  by  nature  or  societ}^  I  know  that  this  defi- 
nition will  not  commend  itself  to  the  inattentive 
reader.  But  let  me  leave  my  meaning  fully  ex- 
pressed. I  say,  then,  that  I  act  divinely,  or  that 
my  action  is  perfect,  only  when  I  follow  my  own 
taste  or  attraction,  uncontrolled  either  by  my  natural 
wants  or  my  obligations  to  other  men.      I  do  not 


30  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

mean  that  I  act  divinely  when  I  follow  my  attrac- 
tions to  the  denial  of  my  physical  wants  and  my 
social  obligations  ;  but  only  in  independence  of 
them.  If  these  things  control  my  action,  it  will  not 
be  divine. 

For  example,  I  have  what  is  ordinarily  called  a 
great  love  of  luxury.  That  is,  I  have  a  sponta- 
neous desire  after  all  manner  of  exquisite  accom- 
modation for  my  body.  1  desire  a  commodious 
and  beautiful  house,  graceful  and  expressive  fur- 
niture, carriages  and  horses,  and  all  the  other  ap- 
pliances of  easy  living.  But  I  lack  the  actual  pos- 
session of  all  these  things.  I  am  utterly  destitute 
of  means  to  procure  them.  Yet  my  inextinguish- 
able love  for  them  prompts  me  incessantly  to  action. 
Now  you  perceive  that  my  action  in  this  case,  being 
shaped  or  controlled  by  my  want  of  all  these  things, 
cannot  be  free  or  spontaneous,  cannot  be  divine  as 
expressing  myself  alone.  It  will  in  fact  be  tho- 
roughly servile.  It  will  be  abject  toil  instead  of  free 
action.  Tliat  is,  I  shall  probably  begin  by  some 
low  manual  occupation,  such  as  sawing  wood  or 
porterage.  I  shall  diligently  hoard  every  penny 
accruing  from  my  occupation  not  necessary  to  my 
subsistence,  that  I  may  in  time  arise  to  a  more 
commanding  vocation,  in  which  I  may  realize  larger 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  Si 

gains,  and  so  on  until  1  shall  have  at  length  attained 
my  wishes,  and  achieved  the  necessary  basis  of  my 
personality.  This  action,  then,  is  completely  un- 
divine  ;  it  does  not  originate  in  myself  as  disen- 
gaged from  nature  and  my  fellow-man,  but  in  my- 
self as  still  involved  in  subjection  to  them,  and  burn- 
ing to  become  free.  So  long  as  this  condition  of 
bondage  lasts,  you  may  be  sure  that  my  action  will 
be  the  action  of  a  slave,  and  that  the  deference  I  pay 
to  morality  will  be  purely  prudential.  If  the  great 
end,  which  is  my  personal  emancipation,  can  be 
better  secured  by  strict  attention  to  its  maxims,  of 
course  I  shall  observe  them.  But  if  not,  I 
shall  be  likely  to  use  meum  and  tuum  quite  indiffer- 
ently, feeling,  as  the  children  of  Israel  felt  on  the 
eve  of  their  emancipation  from  Egypt,  that  the  spoils 
of  the  oppressor  are  divinely  due  to  the  oppressed. 

But  now,  on  the  other  hand,  suppose  my  emanci- 
pation accomplished  ;  suppose  me  in  possession  of 
all  natural  good,  and  of  all  social  privileges  ;  sup- 
pose, in  a  word,  that  I  am  no  longer  in  bondage  to 
nature  or  society,  having  secured  ample  wealth  and 
reputation,  and  become  free,  therefore,  to  act  ac- 
cording to  my  own  sovereign  taste  ;  then  you  per- 
ceive, at  a  glance,  that  this  love  of  luxury  in  my 
bosom,  instead  of  leading  me  merely  to  the  accu- 


32  THE    DIVINE    MAK. 

raulation  of  wealth,  would  prompt  me  exclusively 
to  creative  action,  or  a  mode  of  action  which  would 
enrich  the  community  as  much  '  as  myself.  For, 
having  now  all  that  nature  and  society  yielded  for 
the  satisfaction  of  this  love,  the  love  would  not  there- 
upon become  extinct  or  satiated  ;  on  the  contrary, 
it  would  burn  all  the  brighter  for  the  nourishment 
it  had  received,  and  impel  me,  therefore,  to  new 
and  untried  methods  of  gratifying  il.  Thus,  in- 
stead of  a  mere  absorbent  or  consumer,  which  my 
natural  and  social  destitution  rendered  me,  I  should 
now  become  an  actual  producer  of  new  wealth  ;  a 
producer,  too,  whose  power  would  be  as  infinite  as 
the  love  which  inspired  it  was  infinite,  being  de- 
rived from  the  infinite  God  Himself. 

A  man,  then,  does  not  truly  act  at  all,  does  not 
act  in  any  such  sense  that  the  action  may  be  pro- 
nounced absolutely  his,  so  long  as  his  personality 
remains  undeveloped  ;  so  long  as  he  remains  in 
bondage  to  nature  or  society.  Before  he  can  truly 
act  or  show  forth  the  divine  power  within  him,  he 
must  be  in  a  condition  of  perfect  outward  freedom, 
of  perfect  insubjection  to  nature  and  society  ;  all  his 
natural  wants  must  be  supplied,  and  all  social  ad- 
vantages must  be  open  to  him.  Until  these  things 
are  achieved  his  action  must  be  more  or  less  imper- 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  33 

feet  and  base.  You  may,  indeed,  frighten  him  into 
some  show  of  decorum,  by  representations  of  God 
as  an  infallible  policeman  intent  always  on  evil- 
doers, but  success  in  this  way  is  very  partial.  The  ^ 
church  itself,  in  fact,  which  authorizes  these  repre- 
sentations, incessantly  defeats  their  force  by  its  doc- 
trine of  absolution,  or  its  proclamation  of  mercy  to  , 
the  most  successful  villany,  if  only  repentant  at  the 
last  gasp.  Not  only  the  church,  but  the  whole  cur- 
rent of  vital  action  defeats  these  safeguards.  Thus 
our  entire  system  of  trade,  as  based  upon  what  is 
called  **  unlimited  competition,"  is  a  system  o£  ra- 
pacity and  robbery.  A  successful  merchant  like 
Mr.  A.  or  B.,  is  established  only  on  the  ruins  of  a 
thousand  unsuccessful  ones.  Mr.  A.  or  B.  is  not  to 
be  blamed  individually.  His  heart  is  destitute  of 
the  least  ill-will  towards  the  men  whom,  perhaps, 
he  has  never  seen,  but  whom  he  is  yet  systemati- 
cally strangling.  He  acts  in  the  very  best  manner 
society  allows  to  one  of  his  temper  or  genius.  He 
feels  an  unmistakably  divine  aspiration  after  unlim- 
ited power  ;  a  power,  that  is,  which  shall  be  unlim- 
ited by  any  outward  impediment,  being  limited 
only  by  his  own  interior  taste  or  attraction.  He  will 
seek  the  gratification  of  this  instinct  by  any  means 
the  constitution  of  society  ordains;  thus,  by  the 


34  THE    DIVINE    MAN. 

Utter  destruction  of  every  rival  merchant,  if  society 
allows  it. 

So  much  for  Mr.  A.  or  B.  regarded  as  in  subjec- 
tion to  nature  and  society,  or  as  still  seeking  a  field 
for  his  personality.  But  this  is  not  the  final  and  di- 
vine Mr.  A.  or  B.  The  final  and  divine  Mr.  A.  or 
B.  will  have  subjected  both  nature  and  society  to 
himself,  and  will  then  exhibit,  by  virtue  of  that  very 
force  in  him,  which  is  now  so  destructively  opera- 
tive, a  personality  of  unmixed  benignity  to  every  one. 
The  voice  of  God,  as  declared  in  his  present  in- 
stincts after  unlimited  power,  bids  him,  as  it  bade 
the  Israelites  of  old,  to  spoil  the  oppressor,  to  cleave 
down  every  thing  that  stands  in  the  way  of  his  in- 
heritance :  suppose  him  once  estabhshed  in  that 
good  land  which  flows  with  milk  and  honey,  and 
which  God  has  surely  promised  him,  and  you  will 
Immediately  find  the  same  instinct  manifested  in 
measureless  and  universal  benediction. 

The  Artist,  then,  is  the  Divine  Man, — the  only 
adequate  image  of  God  in  nature, — because  he  alone 
acts  of  himself,  or  finds  the  object  of  his  action  al- 
ways within  his  own  subjectivity.  He  is  that  true 
creature  and  son  of  God,  whom  God  pronounces 
very  good,  and  endows  with  the  lordship  of  the 
whole  earth.     It  would  not  be  difficult,  in  the  wri- 


THE    DIVINE    MAN.  35 

ters's  estimation,  to  show  the  reason  why  the  evo- 
lution of  this  nian  has  required  the  whole  past  phy- 
sical and  moral  experience  of  the  race,  nor  yet  to 
show  how  perfectly  he  justifies  all  the  historic  fea- 
tures of  Christianity,  standing  symbolized  under 
every  fact  recorded  in  the  four  gospels  concerning 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  In  some  other  place,  or  at 
least  on  some  future  occasion,  the  writer  will  un* 
dertake  these  tasks. 


SOCIALISM  AND  CIVILIZATION, 


IN     KELATION 


TO  THE  DEVEL0P3IENT  OF  THE 


INDIVIDU  A  L     LIFE 


3« 


LECTURE 


Gentlemen  : 

I  propose  to  discuss  the  relative  bearing  of  Social- 
ism and  Civilization  on  human  destiny,  or  the  deve- 
lopment of  the  individual  life. 

By  Socialism,  I  mean  not  any  special  system  of 
social  organization,  like  that  of  Fourier,  Owen,  or 
St.  Simon,  but  what  is  common  to  all  these  systems, 
namely,  the  idea  of  a  perfect  fellowship  or  society 
among  men.  And  by  Civilization,  of  course,  I  mean 
the  present  political  constitution  of  the  nations. 
Between  the  fundamental  idea  of  Sociahsm,  which 
affirms  the  possibility  of  a  perfect  life  on  earth,  or 
the  insubjection  of  man  both  to  nature  and  his  fel- 
low-man, and  the  fundamental  idea  of  Civihzation, 
which  affirms  the  perpetual  imperfection  of  human 
life,  or  the  permanent  subjection  of  man  to  nature 
and  society,  a  great  discrepancy  exists;  and  I  hope 
to  interest  my  nudiencein  a  brief  examination  of  its 


40  SOCIALISM    A^D 

features.  I  am  sure  you  cannot  bestow  your  sponta- 
neous attention  upon  the  subject  without  the  great- 
est advantage. 

The  differences  of  detail  which  characterize  the 
systems  of  St.  Simon,  Owen,  Fourier,  and  other  so- 
cietary  reformers,  are  of  very  httle  present  account 
to  us.  What  is  of  great  present  account  is  the 
signal  agreement  of  these  men  in  point  of  princi- 
ple. They  agree  in  holding  our  present  social  con- 
dition to  be  not  only  vicious,  which  every  one  will 
admit,  but  also  stupid,  which  is  not  so  universally 
obvious.  They  declare  that  it  is  entirely  competent 
to  us  at  any  time  to  organize  relations  of  profound 
and  enduring  harmony  among  men,  and  thus  to 
banish  crime,  vice,  and  suffering  from  the  earth ; 
and  that  nothing  but  an  ignorance  of  the  true  prin- 
ciples of  human  nature  stands  between  us  and  this 
most  desirable  consummation.  Crime,  vice  and 
suffering,  they  allege,  are  not  essential  to  human 
society,  but  are  merely  incidental  to  its  infancy  or 
nonage,  and  are  sure  to  disappear  before  the  ad- 
vancing wisdom  of  its  majority.  Thus  the  socialist 
maintains  the  inherent  righteousness  of  humanity, 
and  resolves  all  its  disorders  into  imperfect  science. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  fundamental  difference 
between  Socialism  and  Civilization.     The  socialist 


CIVILIZATION.  41 

affirms  the  inherent  righteousness  of  humanity,  af- 
firms that  man  is  sufficient  unto  himself,  and  needs 
no  outward  ordinances  for  his  guidance,  save  du- 
ring his  minority.  The  conservative,  on  the  other 
hand,  or  the  advocate  of  the  present,  affirms  the  in- 
herent depravity  of  man,  affirms  that  he  is  insuffi- 
cient unto  himself,  and  requires  the  dominion  of  tu- 
tors and  governors  all  his  appointed  days  upon  the 
earth.  This  accordingly  is  the  quarrel  which  has 
first  to  be  settled — the  quarrel  between  Socialism 
and  Civilization,  before  men  will  care  in  an}^  con- 
siderable numbers  to  balance  the  claims  of  rival  so- 
cialists. Let  it  first  of  all  be  made  plain  to  us  that 
Socialism  is  true  in  idea,  is  true  as  against  Civiliza- 
tion ;  then  we  shall  willingly  enough  discuss  the 
relative  superiority  of  St.  Simon  to  Owen,  or  of 
Fourier  to  both. 

How  then  shall  this  grand  preliminary  quarrel  be 
settled  ?  Of  course,  historically  or  actualty,  it  will 
be  settled  only  by  the  march  of  events.  But  how 
shall  it  be  settled  meanwhile,  intellectually,  or  to 
3^our  and  my  individual  satisfaction  ?  Each  of 
us,  doubtless,  will  judge  it  in  the  light  of  his 
own  ideas  and  aspirations.  If,  for  example,  So- 
cialism appear  to  promise  better  things  than  Civili- 
zation to  the  highest  life  of  man,  we  cannot  fail,  ot 


42  SOCIALISM    AND 

course,  to  bid  it  God-speed,  and  predict  its  speedy 
triumph.  If  the  reverse  judgment  should  ensue, 
we  shall,  equally  of  course,  execrate  it,  and  leave  it 
to  the  contempt  of  mankind.  Now  it  is  of  no  con- 
sequence to  my  hearer  to  be  apprized  of  my  private 
attitude  with  respect  to  this  controversy.  Yet  his 
own  decision  may  be  helped  one  way  or  the  other, 
either  for  Socialism  or  against  it,  by  a  fair  scrutiny 
of  the  grounds  on  which  any  intelligent  person  has 
already  come  to  a  conclusion.  Accordingly,  I  will 
not  hesitate  frankly  to  declare  the  method  of  my 
own  understanding  in  dealing  with  this  contro- 
versy. 

Our  design  being  then  to  try  Socialism  and  Civili- 
zation by  the  bearing  they  respectively  exert  upon 
the  destiny  of  man,  or  his  highest  life,  let  me  first 
of  all  declare  my  conception  of  that  destiny. 

Man's  destiny  is,  to  become  sufficient  unto  him- 
self, or  what  is  the  same  thing,  to  become  both  the 
object  and  subject  of  his  own  action.  This  is 
his  destiny  or  perfect  life,  because  it  exactly  images 
the  divine  life.  We  call  God  perfect  or  infinite, 
because  He  is  sufficient  unto  Himself.  And  we  call 
Him  sufficient  unto  Himself,  because  His  power  is 
unlimited  by  any  thing  external  to  Him,  or  what  is 
the  same  thinor,  because  the  object  of  His  action  falls 


CIVILIZATION.  43 

in  every  case  within  His  own  subjectivity.  The  per- 
fection of  action  consists  in  the  internality  of  the  ob- 
ject to  the  subject.  Every  action  is  genuine  or  per- 
fect which  expresses  this  internaUty,  which  ex- 
presses the  inward  taste  or  personality  of  the  sub- 
ject. And  every  action  is  spurious  or  imperfect 
which  expresses  the  externahty  of  the  object  to  the 
subject,  which  exhibits  the  subject  obeying  some 
outward  motive,  either  of  natural  desire  or  social 
obligation.  Now  inasmuch  as  God  creates  or  gives 
being  to  all  things,  inasmuch  as  the  universe  has  its 
total  being  in  Him,  his  action  knows  no  external 
object  or  end.  As  nothing  exists  out  of  Him,  He 
cannot  act  from  any  outward  motive  or  impulsion, 
but  only  from  an  inward  joy  or  delight ;  and  to  act 
purely  from  an  inward  joy  or  delight,  is  to  be  suffi- 
cient unto  one's  self,  and  consequently  infinite  or 
perfect. 

Such  being  the  perfection  of  the  Creator,  it  fol- 
lows that  the  destiny  of  the  creature,  or  his  highest, 
his  perfect,  his  infinite  life,  lies  in  his  becoming  the 
conscious  source  of  his  own  action,  in  his  becoming 
not  merely  the  subject,  but  also  the  exclusive  object 
of  his  own  activity,  in  his  becoming,  in  other  words, 
like  God,  sufficient  unto  himself.  You  perceive 
that  the  very  fact  of  his  creatureship  necessitates 


)r 


44  SOCIALISM    AND 

this  destiny.  To  be  a  creature  of  God,  is  simply 
and  in  its  largest  statement,  to  reflect  or  image 
God,  and  man  cannot  reflect  or  image  God,  that  is 
to  say,  cannot  become  a  true  creature  of  God,  save 
in  so  far  as  he  becomes  the  actual  unity  of  internal 
and  external,  or  of  object  and  subject.  God  is  the 
absolute  unity  of  object  and  subject,  or  internal  and 
external,  because  He  alone  has  being,  and  there- 
fore excludes  all  limitation,  or  definition.  To  be- 
come God's  image  therefore,  man  must  become  the 
actual  unity  of  internal  and  external,  or  object  and 
subject.  He  must  be  himself  the  unity  of  these  two 
elements,  must  be  himself  the  sole  object,  as  well  as 
the  sole  subject  of  all  his  activity.  Thus  the  inten- 
sest  individuality,  an  individuality  amounting  in 
every  case  to  what  we  now  call  genius,  is  the  birth- 
right of  man.  He  dishonors,  he  disavows  his  divine 
source  until  this  birthright  be  universally  vindicated. 
The  vindication  of  it  is  in  fact  the  very  staple  of  hu- 
man history,  the  very  stuflfoutof  which  the  whole 
vast  fabric  has  been  woven.  For  man  has  been 
vicious,  that  is,  has  warred  with  nature,  only  be- 
cause nature  unjustly  claims  his  allegiance.  And 
he  has  been  criminal,  that  is,  has  warred  with  so- 
ciety, only  because  society  holds  him  in  unrighteous 
subjection. 


CIVILIZATION.  45 

The  divinely-imposed  destiny  of  man  then,  the 
destiny  imposed  hy  the  very  fact  of  his  creatureship, 
involves  his  complete  dominion  both  of  nature  and 
society.  If  man  be  the  creature  of  God,  then  as 
God  is  infinite  or  perfect,  or  what  is  the  same  thing, 
as  His  power  is  unlimited  by  any  thing  external  to 
Him,  is  unlimited  by  any  thing  but  His  own  sove- 
reign pleasure,  so  consequently  man,  His  creature, 
is  bound  to  exhibit  the  same  infinitude  or  perfec- 
tion, and  achieve  an  equally  universal  dominion. 
He  is  pledged  by  the  fact  of  his  creatureship  to 
exert  a  power  unlimited  by  any  thing  external  to 
him,  by  any  thing  but  his  own  sovereign  pleasure, 
and  consequently,  he  is  pledged  to  achieve  the  per- 
fect empire  both  of  nature  and  society.  You  can- 
not reflect  for  a  moment  on  this  fact  of  his  creature- 
ship,  on  the  fact  that  God  is  the  all  of  his  life, 
without  acknowledging  that  the  power  of  man  is  at 
bottom  the  power  of  God;  without  acknowledging 
in  fact,  that  the  substantial  force  or  selfhood  in 
every  man  is  God.  Hence  you  conclude  that  man 
is  bound  by  an  irrepressible  divine  instinct,  that  he 
is  in  truth  divinely  impelled|to  aspire  after  a  com- 
plete conquest  both  of  nature  and  society.  They 
must  both  confess  his  lordship,  must  both  render 
him^  perfect  homage  and  furtherance,  or  suffer  the 


46  SOCIALISM    AND 

chastisement  of  disobedience.  Accordingly,  so  long 
as  the  subjugation  of  the  physical  and  moral  uni- 
verse to  the  individual  life  is  actually  incomplete, 
and  man's  dignity  as  man  consequently  in  abey- 
ance, you  find  him  asserting  his  rightful  supremacy 
to  both,  if  not  in  a  normal  and  permanent  way,  why 
then  by  the  ephemeral  and  loathsome  methods  of 
vice  and  crime.  For  vice  is  nothing  else  than 
man's  instinctive  revulsion  against  the  dominion 
of  his  own  body  :  rather  than  endure  that  dominion 
he  destroys  the  body.  And  crime  is  nothing  more 
than  his  instinctive  revulsion  against  the  dominion  of 
society :  rather  than  endure  that  dominion,  he  re- 
nounces, he  destroys  society.  Philosophically  re- 
garded, vice  and  crime  are  simply  negative  asser- 
tions of  man's  sovereign  individuality,  of  his  divinely 
communicated  and  indefeasible  responsibility  to  him- 
self alone.  They  are  the  despised  and  disregarded 
prophets — prophets  drunk  with  the  wisdom  of  God, 
and  therefore  themselves,  like  all  prophets,  unen- 
riched  by  it — of  the  ultimate  dignity  of  the  indivi- 
dual life,  a  dignity  which  shall  be  established  upon 
the  unlimited  submission,  and  nurtured  by  the  ex- 
haustless  bounty,  both  of  nature  and  society. 

But  you  will  say,  how  is  this  possible?  How  shall 
the  individual  life  become  thus  eminent  over  nature 


CIVILIZATION.  47 

and   society,  without   greater  qualification  than  it 

now  possesses  ?     Look  at  Lord on  the  other 

side  of  the  water  ;  look  at  Bishop on  this  side. 

Both  of  these  men  have  come  into  exalted  place, 
into  positions  of  wealth  and  social  eminence,  and 
you  instantly  perceive  each  to  be  an  enthroned 
vanity,  an  enthroned  flatulence,  worthless  because 
sycophantic  to  the  governing  class ;  worse  than 
worthless  to  the  subject  class,  because  supported 
by  them.  What  shall  hinder  you  and  me  and 
every  one  from  the  conspicuous  imbecility  of  these 
men? 

The  inquirer  errs  by  confounding  things  different. 
He  confounds  our  natural  and  finite  individuality 
with  our  spiritual  or  infinite  one,  which  is  a  great 
oversight.  The  temporal  and  spiritual  lordships 
he  adduces  are  types  or  shadows — not  substantial 
things,  and  now  that  the  day  has  come  for  the  sub- 
stantial things  themselves  to  claim  inauguration  in 
men's  respect,  the  old  worn-out  types  avouch  their 
intrinsic  stupidity  by  disputing  ground  with  them. 
As  well  might  the  finger-post  claim  to  be  the  city 
toward  which  it  points,  as  these  puny  emblems  claim 
to  be  the  divine  realities  they  barely  indicate.  I,  on 
the  contrary,  am  speaking  altogether  of  the  Divine 
Man,  the  legitimate  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  the 


48  SOCIALISM    AND 

man  whom  both  Church  and  State,  both  priest  and 
king,  merely  typify,  and  the  shock  of  whose  oncoming 
feet  consequently  now  rocks  every  throne  and  altar 
in  Christendom  to  their  base,  causing,  in  fact,  the 
whole  christian  orb  to  reel  to  and  fro  like  a  drunken 
man.  Let  us  consider  the  constitution  of  this  man. 
Let  us,  in  other  words,  consider  the  precise  nature 
of  our  true  or  God-given  individuality. 

Our  true  individuality  is  our  faculty  of  action,  our 
power  to  do.  By  so  much  as  I  am  able  to  do  or 
produce,  am  I  myself.  A  man  is  that  which  he 
does,  neither  more  nor  less.  What  I  do,  that  I  am. 
I  possess  both  passion  and  intelligence,  but  neither 
of  these  things  characterize  me;  they  characterize 
all  men,  characterize  my  nature.  What  charac- 
terizes me,  what  gives  me  individuaUty,  or  distinct- 
ive genius,  is  my  action.  Thus  all  character  is 
grounded  in  action  ;  all  being  grounded  in  doing ; 
all  cause  grounded  in  effect.  This  constitutes,  ac- 
cording to  Svvedenborg,  the  glory  of  Deity,  that  He 
has  no  love  nor  wisdom  apart  from  His  power,  nei- 
ther esse  nor  existere  apart  from  pi'ocedQre.  In  other 
words,  God's  passion  and  intelligence,  so  to  speak, 
subsist  only  in  His  action.  In  a  briefer  word  still, 
God  is  essentially  active. 

But  now  observe  :    although  action  furnishes  the 


CIVILIZATION.  49 

sole  ground  and  measure  of  being,  although,  in 
other  words,  man's  true  selfhood  consists  in  his 
facult}'  of  action,  yet  we  must  carefully  discriminate 
the  kind  of  action  which  constitutes  that  true  or 
divine  selfhood.  Our  highest  mode  of  action  is  aes- 
thetic. Oar  proper  individuality  consequently,  our 
inmost  and  God-given  genius,  respires  exclusively 
the  atmosphere  of  Art,  and  the  Artist  accordingly 
stands  forth  as  the  sole  and  plenary  Divine  Man. 
All  action  properly  so  called,  all  action  which  really 
individualizes  us,  is  essentially  aesthetic.  Not  our 
physical  and  moral  ac^on,  or  what  we  do  from  the 
constraint  of  necessity  and  duty,  but  only  our  aes- 
thetic action,  or  what  we  do  from  taste,  from  spon- 
taneity, expresses  our  true  or  inmost  personality. 
Both  our  physical  and  moral  action  is  obligatory, 
denying  us  that  freedom  we  have  in  God.  They 
are  both  enforced  by  penalties,  and  clearly  a  man 
needs  no  penalties  to  enforce  his  doing  what  he 
does  of  himself,  or  spontaneously.  Whatever  ac- 
tion is  enforced  by  the  alternative  of  suffering,  con- 
fesses itself  by  that  fact  to  be  inappropriate  to  the 
subject,  to  be  a  sheer  imposition  either  of  his  phy- 
sical or  social  relations.  The  action  which  is  ap- 
propriate to  him,  which  expresses  his  proper  or 
God-given  genius,  he  does  of  himself,  does  sponta- 


50  SOCIALISM    AND  /^V 

neously  and  without  the  urgency  of  any  external 
motive. 

Accordingly  both  our  physical  and  moral  activity 
fall  under  this  condemnation.  They  neither  of 
them  express,  are  neither  of  them  appropriate  to, 
our  divine  or  perfect  individuality.  They  both  ex- 
press our  infirm  or  finite  individuality,  that  which 
we  derive  from  our  relations  to  our  own  body  and 
our  fellow  man.  I  must  obey  my 'natural  necessi- 
ties and  my  social  obligations,  or  suffer  in  the  one 
case  physical,  in  the  other  moral,  death.  Hence  I 
am  quoad  my  natural  and  social  selfhood  in  inces- 
sant bondage  to  the  fear  of  death.  And  you  know 
that  our  true  or  inmost  individuality,  that  which  we 
derive  from  God,  is  incapable  of  death,  is  immortal. 
It  is  the  doom  of  the  natural  and  moral  man  to 
perish  ;  the  internal  or  divine  man  survives  their  de- 
cay. Their  decay  constitutes  for  him  in  fact  an  in- 
cident of  progress,  a  condition  of  greater  enfran- 
chisement. 

I  say  that  death  is  the  doom  of  the  natural  and 
moral  man.  What  I  mean  by  this  is,  that  neither 
the  natural  nor  the  moral  law  is  the  law  of  life.  Let 
me  seriously  attempt  to  fulfil  either  of  these  laws,  and 
I  sink  into  instant  death.  It  is  the  peculiarity  of 
either  law  to  deride  all  direct  obedience,  and  accept 


^...VH,^.'.^-:^     L.    ^U.^     e^^^X^    <^0li^ 


•     CIVILIZATION.  51 

fulfilment  at  the  hands  of  those  only  who  are  per- 
fectly indifferent  to  it.  Neither  of  them  was  in- 
tended to  confer  life  upon  man,  but  merely  to  cele- 
brate and  adorn  a  life  flowing  from  an  infinite 
source.  Tlius  let  me  set  myself  perfectly  to  fulfil 
the  law  of  nature,  say,  for  example,  to  achieve  per- 
fect health  of  body,  and  I  not  only  on  the  instant 
become  the  abject  slave  of  my  body,  but  kind  na- 
ture herself,  as  if  to  scourge  me  out  of  such  slavery, 
lets  loose  her  whole  artillery  of  destruction  to  lay 
me  low  in  the  dust — her  winter's  cold,  her  summer's 
heat,  her  myriad  lurking  miasms  and  pestilences. 
The  only  man  whom  nature  respects,  though  she 
has  at  present  a  very  imperfect  respect  for  any  man, 
the  only  man  whom  she  feeds  with  her  choicest 
juices  and  aromas,  is  the  man  who  cares  not  a  jot 
about  her,  and  snaps  his  fingers  equally  at  her  curse 
and  blessing.  So  also  let  me  devote  myself,  with 
a  view  to  life,  to  the  fulfilling  of  the  moral  law,  or 
the  complete  discharge  of  my  obligations  to  my  fel- 
low-man, and  instead  of  the  life  I  covet,  ten  thou- 
sand deaths  instantly  open  their  mouths  to  sting  me 
into  despair  and  madness.  The  letter  of  the  law 
appears  brief  and  easy,  but  the  moment  I  Indulge 
the  fatal  anxiety,  have  I  fulfilled  it?  I  begin  to  ap- 
prehend its  infinite  spirit,  the  spirit  of  benevolence 


*^  SOCIALISM    AND 

or  charity,  which  prompts  such  an  utter  crucifixion 
of  selfishness — such  an  incessant  and  immaculate 
deference  to  the  will  and  even  the  whimsy  of  ano- 
ther, that  I  am  worried  and  fretted  into  my  grave, 
before  I  have  really  entered  on  m}^  obedience — and 
the  law  which  I  fondly  deemed  to  intend  me  life, 
turns  out  a  minister  of  utter  death. 

The  truth  is,  society  like  nature  secretly  despi- 
ses the  slave  and  reverences  the  freeman — despises 
the  man  who  lives  upon  her  favor,  and  worships 
him  who  tramples  that  favor  under  foot.  Since  the 
world  has  stood,  no  man  of  genius,  no  man  of  gen- 
uine inward  force  has  ever  announced  himself,  with- 
out society,  in  the  long  run,  forgiving  and  justifying 
his  most  flagrant  contempt  of  her  authority.  The 
grandest  genius  yet  revealed  on  earth,  a  man  with 
whose  awful  freedom  the  timid  and  servile  genius 
of  other  men  compares,  as  the  bounded  current  of  a 
\     river  compares    with  the  measureless  expanse  of 

i  ocean,  defied  to  the  last  extremity  the  most  sensi- 
tive,  the  most  exacting  and  the  most  conceited  so- 
ciety the  world  has  ever  known,  and  wnth  what  re- 
suit?  He  never  succumbed  to  it  for  one  moment, 
from  his  cradle  to  his  grave,  never  did  and  never 

I     said  a  thing  that  did  not   provoke  its  unmeasured 
J    hate,  yet  what  has  been  the  consequence  ?     No  one 


CIVILIZATION.  58 

like  him  was  ever  found  to  have  uttered  the  univer- 
sal heart  of  man ;  he  has  been  deified  by  the  instinct 
of  the  most  enlightened  ages;  churches,  kingdoms, 
empires,  worlds  have  baptized  themselves  in  his 
name  ;  pompous  rituals  hourly  declare  his  praise  ; 
every  one  who  stood  in  the  most  transient  relation 
to  him  has  been  canonized  ;  even  the  mother  he  dis- 
claimed and  the  disciple  he  rebuked  have  been  ex- 
alted into  the  matronage  and  patronage  of  heaven ; 
the  very  instrument  of  his  death  has  become  sym- 
bolical of  everlasting  life  ;  and  all  this,  while  as  yet 
men  have  only  known  the  meagerest  and  most  falla- 
cious surface  of  his  sweetness,  or  while  the  actual 
truth  of  the  case  has  appealed  only  to  the  blindness 
of  instinct  in  them,  utterly  denying  the  confirmation 
of  reason. 

But  the  proposition  needs  no  argument.  A  refer- 
ence to  our  daily  practical  experience  proves  that 
we  never  confound  a  man's  true  individuality  with 
his  physical  and  social  conditions.  We  never  as- 
cribe genius,  character,  divinity,  to  a  man  on  the 
strength  of  his  physical  or  moral  excellence.  We 
deem  him  indebted  for  the  former  to  the  bounty  of 
nature,  for  the  latter  to  the  grace  of  God.  We  do 
not  conceive  of  either  as  reflecting  the  slightest 
credit  upon  the  man  himself,  as  in  the  shghtest  de- 
^ ^  4 


54  SOCIALISM    AND 

gree  appropriate  to  himself.  They  are  appropriate 
to  man  universally,  and  in  this  point  of  view  we  do 
them  honor.  We  feel  that  no  one  has  any  special 
title  to  these  things,  and  that  their  possession  there- 
fore is  a  matter  of  pure  accident.  No  one  suspects 
Cleopatra  of  possessing  any  private  property  in  her 
beauty,  nor  Dr.  Channing  any  private  property  in 
his  virtue.  Should  such  a  suspicion  get  authenti- 
cated, we  should  instantly  declare  these  persons 
enemies  rather  than  ornaments  of  our  common  life, 
because  they  took  away  or  sequestered  so  much  of 
what  should  be  a  common  possession.  A  beautiful 
physique  and  a  beautiful  morale  are  both  alike  a  gift 
and  not  an  achievement.  They  flow  from  a  fortu- 
nate natural  or  a  fortunate  spiritual  parentage,  and 
are  utterly  irrelevant  to  the  true  or  divine  individu- 
ality of  the  subject.  Genius,  which  is  the  divine  pre- 
sence in  man,  visits  alike  the  beautiful  and  those 
who  are  destitute  of  beauty,  and  it  consecrates  the 
annals  of  virtue  not  a  whit  more  profusely  than  it 
does  those  of  crime. 

No,  we  gladly  recognise  and  honor  both  beauty 
and  virtue,  but  we  forbid  the  subject  to  claim  the 
least  property  in  either.  On  the  contrary,  when  the 
handsome  man  begins  to  esteem  himself  for  his 
beauty,  and  the  upright  man  to  prize  his  virtue,  the 


CIVILIZATION. 


55 


company  of  plain  people  and  sinners  becomes  in- 
stantly sweet  and  refreshing.  The  truth  is,  every 
man  in  the  exact  ratio  of  his  manhood  is  ashamed 
both  of  his  beauty  and  his  virtue,  feeling  himself  to 
be  so  wholly  unimplicated  in  either,  feeling  him- 
self really  in  debt  to  a  partial  nature  for  the  one,  and 
a  happy  spiritual  chance  for  the  other.  And  no  true 
man  loves  to  be  a  debtor,  loves  in  fact  to  be  either 
debtor  or  creditor.  Can  any  thing  be  so  disastrous 
to  all  manhood  as  foppery,  or  pride  in  one's  physical 
individuality  ?  Yes,  Pharisaism,  or  spiritual  foppery, 
which  signifies  a  pride  in  one's  moral  individuality. 
This  is  even  more  disastrous.  But  if  the  physical 
and  moral  hfe — the  life  of  nature  and  the  life  of  so- 
ciety, were  the  true  divine  life  in  man,  then  it  were 
right  for  us  to  magnify  our  physical  and  moral 
attributes  and  make  them  public. 

Wherefore  I  repeat  that  it  is  an  infallible  in- 
stinct of  the  strong  man  to  conceal  his  strength, 
and  of  the  virtuous  man  to  renounce  his  virtue. 
Nature  bids  the  one  take  no  pride  in  his  strength, 
the  other  to  take  no  pride  in  his  uprightness,  under 
penalty  of  proving  a  nuisance.  They  are  valuable 
possessions  of  man,  but  they  constitute  no  true 
manhood.  They  are  ornaments  to  be  worn  upon 
occasion,   but    should    never   be   paraded.      The 


56  SOCIALISM  AND 

jewels  of  a  beautiful  woman  do  not  pretend  to  im- 
part beauty,  but  only  to  signalize  or  celebrate  it. 
When  worn  for  their  own  sake,  or  worn  by  other 
than  beautiful  per*3ons,  they  are  designed  merely  as 
a  tacit  apology  for  the  absence  of  beauty,  as  a  sort 
of  death's  head  or  hatchment  to  indicate  where 
beauty  ought  to  be,  but  alas  is  not.  For  nature 
owes  a  form  of  immaculate  grace  and  vigor  to  her 
sovereign  lord,  and  the  personal  ornaments,  which 
we  his  present  deputies  and  representatives  wear, 
may  be  viewed  accordingly  as  so  many  evidences  of 
nature's  obligation,  and  so  many  pledges  of  its  ulti- 
mate discharge.  In  the  same  manner,  all  relatively 
great  physical  and  moral  superiority  should  be  re- 
garded by  the  subject  as  insignia  of  an  infirm  and 
beggarly  individuality,  and  should  always  be  exert- 
ed under  an  inward  protest.  For  why  should  man, 
the  heir  of  infinitude,  envy  the  horse  his  strength, 
the  angel  his  goodness  ?  Leave  the  horse  his  dis- 
tinction, leave  the  angel  his.  God  will  not  always 
leave  His  child  mendicant  upon  the  heavens  above 
and  the  earth  beneath,  but  will  fast  reduce  both  of 
these  into  the  joyful  service  of  his  great  supremacy. 
\  Behold  then  the  fact :  all  our  individually-cha- 
racteristic action  is  aesthetic,  or  expresses  our  in- 
ward taste.     I  have  no  property  in  any  action,  no 


CIVILIZATION.  57 

action  truly  represents  and  belongs  to  me,  unless  the 
object  of  it  be  within  me,  unless  it  reflect  my  pri- 
vate or  distinctive  genius,  unless,  in  short,  it  be 
creative  and  embody  some  idea.  Hence  we  have 
an  infallible  test  of  our  true  or  God-given  individ- 
uality. For  individuality,  character,  being,  pro- 
prium,  selfhood,  personality,  whatever  you  please 
to  call  the  inmost  vital  fact  in  man,  stands  in  action. 
Thus  our  true  individuality  is  neither  physical  nor 
moral.  It  is  purely  aesthetic.  It  stands  in  our  rela- 
tion neither  to  nature  nor  to  our  fellow-man,  but 
exclusively  to  God,  who  is  our  inmost  life.  He 
alone  is  truly  self-pronounced — he  alone  divinely 
vivified — who  acts  neither  from  physical  nor  social 
control — neither  from  necessity  nor  duty — but  pure- 
ly from  delight  or  attraction,  and  this  emphatically 
is  the  Artist.  He  alone  acts  from  inspiration,  or  from 
within  outwards.  The  natural  man  obeys  the  law 
of  his  finite  body.  The  moral  man  obeys  the  law 
of  his  finite  fellow,  the  law  of  society.  But  the  Ar- 
tist— and  when  I  use  the  word  Artist,  I  do  not  mean 
any  special  functionary,  as  the  poet,  painter,  or  mu- 
sician ;  I  mean  the  man  of  whatsoever  function, 
from  king  to  cobbler,  who  follows  his  function  from 
taste  and  not  from  necessity  nor  duty,  who  culti- 
vates it  not  with  a  view  merely  to  a  livelihood  or  to 


68  SOCIALISM    AND 

fame,  but  purely  because  he  loves  it  and  finds  it  its 
own  exceeding  great  reward — but  the  Artist,  or  Di- 
vine Man  obeys  the  infinite  law  of  God  as  manifest- 
ed in  the  inspirations  of  his  own  soul.  He  alone  ac- 
cordingly attracts  the  unbribed  homage  of  mankind . 
All  men  of  every  religion  and  complexion  unite  to 
do  him  honor.  He  breaks  down  every  middle  wall 
of  partition  which  ignorance  and  superstition  have 
erected  between  Jew  and  Gentile,  saint  and  sinner, 
and  makes  of  the  twain  one  new  man.  Hence  the 
Artist  claims  to  be  the  reconciling  or  uniting  term 
between  God  and  man,  the  spiritual  or  infinite  re- 
ality symbolized  by  the  literal  or  finite  God-man, 
the  wholly  incontestible  son  of  God,  the  heir  of  all 
divine  power  majesty  and  glory,  by  whom  alone 
God  estimates  the  world. 

But  if  this  be  so,  then  it  will  be  perceived  that 
the  question  put  to  me  may  be  very  easily  answer- 
ed. That  is  to  say,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  emi- 
nence which  I  claim  for  the  individual,  is  not  that 
mere  usurped  or  conventional  eminence  exhibited 
by  Lord  This  and  Bishop  That,  and  based  upon 
their  subservience  to  sundry  poHtical  and  ecclesias- 
tical interests,  but  an  eminence  which  springs  out  of 
the  real  divine  worth  of  every  individual,  out  of 
God's  most  vital  presence  and  force  within  him,  and 


CIVILIZATION.  5^ 

which  is  cordially  ratified  therefore  by  nature  and 
society.  For  the  Artist,  the  man  of  genius,  the 
man  of  ideas,  is  not  elected  supreme ;  he  is  born 
so.  He  is  not  obliged  to  canvass  for  votes.  He 
only  needs  to  reveal  himself  to  command  all  votes, 
because  he  is  utterly  without  a  competitor.  For  the 
Artist  is  not  good  by  comparison  merely,  or  the  an- 
tagonism of  meaner  men.  He  is  positively  good, 
good  by  absolute  or  original  worth,  good  like  God, 
good  in  himself,  and  therefore  universally  good. 
He  daily  enriches  nature  and  society  with  new  ac- 
quisitions of  beauty.  For  the  bread  and  the  wine — 
for  the  material  and  spiritual  nourishment  they  af- 
ford him,  he  returns  to  their  own  bosoms  good 
measure,  heaped  up,  pressed  down,  and  running 
over,  for  he  mediates  between  them  and  God,  bring- 
ing down  and  making  visible  to  them  the  infinite 
splendor  of  Deity,  while,  at  the  same  time,  devel- 
oping their  own  answering  fecundity,  harmony, 
beauty  and  joy. 

Such  being  our  conception  of  human  destiny,  of 
man's  perfect  life,  I  think  you  will  decide  that  So- 
cialism exhibits  a  far  more  benignant  aspect  to- 
wards it  than  civihzation  does.  For  the  great  ob- 
stacle at  present  to  the  divine  life  in  man  is  the  do- 
mination  of  society,  is  the  preponderance  of  the 


6(1  SOCIALISM    AND 

moral  or  social  elenient  over  the  cesthetic  or  indi- 
vidual one  in  human  affairs.  The  sentiment  of  re- 
sponsibility '^grinds  human  life  into  the  dust.  It 
crushes  the  divine  aroma  or  spirit  out  of  it,  thus  de- 
stroying  the  whole  grace  of  the  fashion  of  it.  It  is 
very  important  that  I  be  under  innocent  relations  to 
my  own  body  and  to  my  fellow-man  ;  it  is  very  im- 
portant that  these  relations  be  full  of  peace  and 
amity  ;  but  it  is  of  an  altogether  infinite  impor- 
tance to  me  that  I  experience  right  relations  to  God 
or  my  inmost  life.  Indeed  the  former  relations  de- 
rive all  their  worth  from  the  latter.  If  it  were  not 
that  I  am  inwardly  one  with  God,  that  I  am  destined 
to  the  inheritance  of  His  infinitude  or  perfection,  and 
consequently  to  a  life  of  universal  benignity,  it 
would  be  of  no  moment  what  relations  I  sustained 
either  to  nature  or  my  fellow-man.  It  would  be  of 
no  moment  beyond  the  immediate  satisfaction  of  my 
appetites,  whether  the  relation  were  one  of  concord 
or  discord.  But  since  on  the  one  hand  I  am  des- 
tined, by  the  very  fact  of  my  creatureship,  to  an  ac- 
tual fellowship  of  the  divine  perfection,  and  since, 
on  the  other  hand,  all  perfection  implies  the  actual 
unity  of  object  and  subject — of  substance  and  form 
— of  internal  and  external — so  consequently  it  is  of 
vital  interest  to   me,   that  my  external    relations, 


CIVILIZATION.  61 

which  are  my  relations  to  nature  and  man,  accu- 
rately reflect  my  internal  ones,  which  are  my  rela- 
tions to  God,   and  present  a  precisely  commensu- 
rate unity  with  them.    But  if  this  be  so,  if  the  worth 
of  my  outward  ties  flow  down   from    the  superior 
worth  of  my  inward  ones,  then  it  is  at  once  obvious 
to  you  that  these  latter  ties  are  of  primary  impor- 
tance, and  should  never  be  controlled  by  the  former. 
If  the  main  fact  of  my  life  be  my  unity  with  God, 
and  the*  secondary  or  derivative  fact  be  my  unity 
with  nature  and  man,  then  clearly  this  subordinate 
interest  should  not  dominate  or  exclude  the  essential 
one.     This  is  plain.    But  now  how  stands  the  fact  ? 
I  have  no  hesitation  in  affirming,  that  the  fact  is 
exactly  counter  to  the  truth.     I  have    no  hesitation 
in  affirming,  that  society,  as  at  present,  or  rather  as 
heretofore,  constituted,  arrays  the  lower  interest  in 
conflict  with  the  higher,  and  debases  man  into  ab- 
ject  slavery  to  itself.      Society   affords  no  succor 
to    the    divine    life   in    man.      Any   culture    we 
can  give  to  that  life,  is  owing  not  to  society,  but 
to  our  fortunate  independence  of  it.     For  the  in- 
cessant action  of  societ}*^  is  to  shut  up  all  my  time 
and  thought  to  the  interests  of  my  mere  visible  ex- 
istence, to  the  necessity  of  providing  subsistence, 
education,  and  social  respect  for  myself  and   my 
4* 


62  SOCIALISM    AND 

children.     T<s'  these  narrow  limits  society  confines 
all  my  passion,   all  my  intellect,  all  my  activity  ; 
and  so  far  denies  me   self-development.     My  true 
or  divine  selfhood  is  completely  swamped  in  tran- 
sient frivolous  cares.     Indeed  so  rigorous  is  our  so- 
cial tyranny,  so  complete  a  servitude  does  society 
impose  upon  the  individual,  that  we  have  almost 
lost  the    tradition    of  our  essential   freedom,  and 
scarcely  one  in  a  million  believes  that  he  has  any 
individuality  or  sacred  ness  apart  from  his  natural 
and  social  ties.    He  who  constitutes  our  private  and 
distinctive  individuality,  He  who  ceaselessly  pants 
to  become  avouched  and  appropriated  to  every  man 
as  his  nearest  and  most  inseparable  self,  is  for  the 
most  part  banished  from  the  glowing  heart  of  hu- 
manity,   into    frigid    and    extramundane    isolation, 
so  that  we  actually  seem  to  have  no  life  above  the 
natural  and  social  spheres. 

But  this  appearance  is  fallacious.  It  is  a  corres- 
pondence of  that  fallacy  of  the  senses  which  makes 
the  earth  central,  and  the  heavens  circumferential. 
I  will  not  deny  that  the  most  genial  relations  bind 
God  and  my  body,  bind  God  and  my  neighbor ; 
but  I  will  deny  tods  viribus  that  either  m}'  body  or 
my  neighbor  forms  the  true  point  of  contact  be- 
tween  God   and   me.     He  is   infinitely  nearer  to 


CIVILIZATION. 


63 


me  than  my  own  body;  infinitely  nearer  to  me 
also  than  my  neighbor.  In  short  He  is  with  me 
not  only  finitely  but  infinitely,  not  only  by  the  me- 
dium of  the  physical  and  moral  life,  but  also  in  my 
spontaneous  attractions  and  tendencies.  Here  pre- 
eminently do  I  find  God.  Here  alone  do  I  behold 
the  infinite  Beauty.  Here  alone  do  I  perfectly  lose 
myself  and  perfectly  find  myself.  Here  alone,  in 
short,  do  I  feel  empowered  to  say,  what  every  true 
creature  of  God  is  bound  to  say  :  I  and  my  father 
are  one. 

I_  I  repeat  that  the  whole  strain  of  society  is  ad- 
verse to  this  spontaneous  and  divine  life  in  man.  It 
relegates  his  whole  energy  to  the  service  of  his  phy- 
sical and  moral  interest,  that  is  to  its  own  direct  ad- 
vantage, and  beyond  this  point  takes  no  cognizance 
of  him.  It  utterly  ignores  his  proper,  God-given, 
and  aesthetic  life,  the  life  whose  supreme  law  is  the 
good  pleasure  of  the  subject ;  or  recognises  it  only 
to  profane  and  corrupt  it.  It  is  melancholy  to  see 
the  crawling  thing  which  society  christens  Art,  and 
feeds  into  fawning  sycophancy.  It  has  no  other 
conception  of  Art  than  as  polished  labor,  labor 
stripped  of  its  jacket  and  apron,  and  put  into  parlor 
costume.  The  Artist  is  merely  the  aboriginal 
ditcher  refined  into  the  painter,  poet,  or  sculptor. 


64 


SOCIALISM    AND 


Art  is  not  the  gush  of  God's  life  into  every  form  of 
spontaneous  speech  and  act ;  it  is  the  talent  of  suc- 
cessfully imitating  nature — the  trick  of  a  good  eye, 
a  good  ear,  or  a  good  hand.  It  is  not  a  really  in- 
finite life,  consubstantiate  with  the  subject  and  hft- 
ing  him  into  ever  nev^  and  unpremeditated  powers 
and  achievements  ;  it  is  an  accomplishment,  a  grace 
to  be  learned,  and  to  be  put  off  and  on  at  one's  con- 
venience. 

Accordingly  society  establishes  academies  of 
Art,  gives  out  rules  for  its  prosecution,  and  issues 
diplomas  to  the  Artist,  by  which  he  may  be  visibly 
discriminated  from  ordinary  people.  But  always 
on  this  condition,  that  he  hallow,  by  every  work  of 
his  hands,  its  existing  prejudices  and  traditions  ; 
that  he  devote  his  perfectly  docile  genius  to  the 
consecration  of  its  morality.  If  he  would  be  truly 
its  child,  let  him  confine  himself  to  the  safe  paths  of 
portraiture  and  bust  making,  to  the  reproduction  of 
the  reigning  sanctities  in  church  and  state,  their  ex- 
emplary consorts  and  interesting  families.  By  this 
door  many  of  our  aspiring  "  artists  "  have  entered 
the  best  society.  But  if  the  disciple  be  skittish,  and 
insist  on  "  sowmg  the  wild  oats  "  of  his  genius,  let 
him,  at  most,  boldly  allegorize  the  Calvinistic  divin- 
ity or  the  Unitarian  morality  into  Voyages  of  Life 


CIVILIZATION.  66 

and  similar  contrivances,  or  dash  off  ineffectual  bri- 
gands and  Magdalens  that  should  find  no  forgiveness 
in  this  world  or  the  next.  But  these  things  are  tri- 
vial. If  society  did  no  greater  harm  to  God's  life 
in  man  than  to  misconceive  the  nature  and  misapply 
the  name  of  Art,  it  would  be  foolish  to  complain. 
But  the  evil  it  does  is  positive  and  profound,  and 
justifies  a  perfecdy  remorseless  criticism. 

For  the  true  complaint  against  society  is  not  the 
little  it  does  actually  to  promote  the  divine  life  in 
man,  but  the  much  it  does  actually  to  hinder  that 
life  by  giving  him  a  conscience  of  sin  against  God, 
and  so  falsifying  the  true  relation  between  them.  If 
I  fail  in  my  allegiance  to  society,  if  I  violate  any  of 
its  enactments,  in  forcibly  taking,  for  example, 
the  property  of  my  neighbor,  society  is  not  thereup- 
on content  to^visit  me  with  the  penalty  provided 
for  the  case  :  it  has  the  hardihood  also  to  proclaim 
me  a  sinner  against  God,  and  threaten  me  with  His 
wrath.  Society  has  the  presumption  to  identify  its 
own  will  with  the  will  of  God.  It  assumes  that 
whatsoever  it  declares  to  be  property,  or  to  belong 
to  A.,  B.  and  C.,  is  also  viewed  as  such'property, 
or  as  so  belonging,  on  the  part  of  God  ;  and  that 
hence  in  violating  this  property  I  offend  God  no 
less  than  itself.     Certainly  it  is  contrary  to  the  di- 


66  SOCIALISM   AND 

vine  will  that  any  man  should  violate  his  neigh- 
bour's property.  We  may  say  that  such  a  thing  is 
absolutely  contrary  to  the  divine  will,  and  caimot 
therefore  be  done.  It  would  be  an  aspersion  of  the 
divine  power  to  say  that  He  gave  me  a  property 
which  any  other  man  had  power  to  take  away  from 
me.  Or  it  would  be  an  aspersion  of  His  goodness 
to  suppose  Him  giving  me  a  certain  property,  and 
at  the  same  time  giving  another  power  to  deprive 
me  of  it.  The  whole  conception  of  a  man  really 
sinning  against  God  is  intolerably  puerile. 

The  error  of  society  herein  lies  in  its  giving  man 
what  Swedenborg  calls  a  false  'proprium,  that  is  a 
property  which  God  does  not  give  him.  Society 
does  all  it  can  to  finite  man,  to  include  or  shut  up 
his  proprium,  his  selfhood,  within  itself,  and  so 
render  him  its  abject  vassal  or  dependent.  The 
more  external  property  it  gives  him,  the  more 
houses,  lands,  flocks,  and  perishable  goods  of  all 
sorts,  the  more  it  finites  him  and  renders  him  de- 
pendent on  itself.  For  society  alone  confers  and 
guarantees  this  property.  Abstract  the  protection 
of  societ}^  and  no  man  could  keep  it  a  day.  God, 
on  the  contrary,  seeks  incessantly  to  aggrandize  His 
child,  and  render  him  in-finite.  He  strives  to  insin- 
uate a  proprium,  which  shall  lift  him  above  all  out- 


CIVILIZATION.  67 

ward  limitation.     He  makes  Himself  over  to  him  in 
an  inward  and  invisible  way,  and  so  endows  him 
with  a  property  both  incorruptible  and  inviolable, 
which  no   moth   can  corrupt,  and  no  thief  break 
through  and  steal. 
)  Undoubtedly  every  man's  enjoyment  of  God  in- 
volves his  enjoyment  also  of  nature  and  his  fellow- 
man.     Undoubtedly  every  man  possesses  a  natural 
and  social  proprium  or  selfhood  as  well  as  a  divine 
one ;  for  the  latter  exacts  the  former  as  its  own 
basis.  What  I  complain  of  is  that  the  former  should 
be  forever  kept  so  disproportionate  to  the  latter.     I 
complain  that  I  who  am  as  to  my  inward  parts  in- 
finite or  perfect,  should    find  no  answering  perfec- 
tion in  my  circumstances.     I  who  am  inwardly  one 
with  God — ONE  I  say,  not  identical^  for  identity  de- 
stroys unity — should  be  one  also  with  nature  and 
my  fellow-man.     My  natural  and  social  proprium 
should  be  precisely  commensurate  with  my  inward 
or  divine  one.     Whatsoever  the  whole  of  nature  has 
to  bestow,  whatever  blessing  the  unlimited  fellow- 
ship of  mankind  encloses,  should  be  mine  by  virtue 
of  my  inward  worth.     Nature  and   society  should 
have  no  power  to  identify  me  with  a  particular  po- 
tato-patch and  a  particular  family  of  mankind  all  my 
days.     The  fact  of  my  divine  genesis  makes  God's 


68  SOCIALISM    AND 

whole  earth  my  home,  makes  all  His  children  my 
intimates  and  brethren.  Why  should  nature  have 
power  to  limit  this  home,  society  have  power  to  hmit 
this  brotherhood  ?  Their  true  function  is  only  to 
universahze  me,  and  give  me  outward  development 
commensurate  with  my  inward  power.  They  but 
cheat  me  when  they  give  me  houses  and  lands,  and 
a  score  of  friends,  and  call  these  things  my  pro- 
perty. They  are  not  my  property.  My  true  pro- 
perty in  nature  includes  all  her  strengths  and  sweet- 
nesses, includesall  her  resources  to  make  pliant  and 
strong  and  beautiful  my  body,  and  give  my  spirits 
the  play  of  the  morning  breeze.  And  my  true  pro- 
perty in  mankind  is  not  my  mere  natural  father  and 
mother  and  brother  and  sister,  and  the  great  tire- 
some dispensation  of  uncles  and  aunts  and  cousins 
and  nieces  thereunto  appended,  but  the  whole  vast 
sweep  of  God's  harmonies  in  the  realms  of  human 
passion,  intellect,  and  action.  Nature  is  my  debtor 
and  foe  until  she  have  deposited  all  her  pith  within 
me,  and  given  me  a  body  superior  to  her  thunders. 
Society  is  likewise  my  debtor  and  foe  until  she 
have  given  me  the  frankest  fellowship  of  every  man, 
until  she  have  lavished  upon  me  the  really  inex- 
haustible wealth    of  human   affection,  and  sunned 


CIVILIZATION.  69 

me  with  the  really  infinite  splendors  of  human 
thought. 

In  one  word  let  nature  give  herself  to  man,  and 
society  give  herself,  as  is  but  fitting  where  God  does 
not  hesitate  to  give  Himself.  Shall  these  have  the 
assurance  to  offer  but  a  part,  where  he  gives  all? 
God  gives  His  infinite  self  to  me.  And  this  pro- 
perty is  inalienable  in  all  ways.  Not  only  it  cannot 
be  stolen  ;  it  cannot  even  be  lent.  The  fine  genius 
or  faculty  of  Shakspeare  could  not  be  transferred  by 
him  t<p  his  friend.  He  could  give  his  friend  all  he 
possessed,  all  his  affection,  all  his  thought,  all  his 
bodily  service.  But  he  could  not  give  him  his  ge- 
nius, his  selfhood,  his  faculty  of  action.  This  was 
not  his  possession.  It  possessed  him  rather,  and  it 
was  possessed  only  of  God.  It  was,  in  fact,  God 
in  him. 

Besides,  suppose  me  to  possess  a  large  conven- 
tional property  in  land  or  money.  Suppose  me 
hereupon  to  address  this,  that,  and  the  other  needy 
friend,  saying,  *'  Let  no  law  divide  us  ;  let  us  share 
and  share  alike,  cut  and  come  again,"  and  so  forth. 
Do  you  not  instantly  feel  that  it  would  be  more 
noble  and  human  for  me  to  do  this,  than  to  make 
these  needy  friends  thieves  in  heart,  by  summoning 
the  law  to  give  them  perpetual  exclusion  ?     In  this 


/ 


70  SOCIALISM    AND 

case  do  I  not  rise  superior  to  the  law  ?  Do  you  not 
perceive  therefore  that  the  law  was  made  only  for 
man,  not  man  for  the  law  ?  Do  you  not  feel,  in 
short,  that  all  law  was  given  only  as  a  foil  or  set-off 
to  our  magnanimity,  only  that  we  might,  by  virtue 
of  our  plenary  manhood^  utterly  renounce  and  abro- 
gate it  ? 

How  sheer  an  idleness  then  to  tell  me  that  I 
have  robbed  a  man  of  property  divinely  given  ! 
Any  property  which  it  was  in  my  power  to  take 
from  him  was  not  peculiarly  proper  to  him.  U  was 
at  least  quite  as  proper  to  me,  or  I  could  not  have 
coveted  it.  When  God  gives  me  a  coat,  no  rogue 
in  Christendom  shall  be  cunning  enough  to  coax  it 
off  my  shoulders.  And  when  He  sends  us  wives, 
the  statute  against  adultery  will  confess  itself  su- 
perfluous. 

Society,  however,  is  at  present  founded  upon  this 
atrocious  calumny  towards  God  and  man,  that 
they  are  essentially  inimical  to  each  other ;  and 
both  God  and  man  consequently  are  working  its 
speedy  downfall.  Interposing  between  man  and 
his  inmost  life,  it  represents  that  life  to  be  death, 
and  drives  him  consequently  to  madness.  Pro- 
fessing to  be  the  husbandman  of  God's  vine- 
yard,  when    He  looks  to  it  for  grapes,   it   brings 


CIVILIZATION.  71 

Him  forth  only  wild  grapes.  When  He  makes 
an  inquisition  for  man,  His  image,  society 
mocks  Him  with  a  hideous  rabble  of  murderers, 
thieves,  harlots  and  liars.  It  obscures,  it  defiles 
God's  righteousness  in  every  soul  of  man.  Will  He 
long  endure  such  a  husbandman  ?  Does  He  not 
prize  the  vineyard  above  the  husbandman,  and  will 
He  not  soon  utterly  destroy  the  latter  from  the 
face  of  the  earth  ? 

Society  pronounces  me  an  evil  man,  by  virtue 
of  my  having  violated  sundry  of  her  statutes. 
B.ut  what  shall  statutes  say  for  themselves  that 
are  capable  of  violation  ?  Shall  they  pretend  to 
be  divine?  This  were  blasphemous.  For  who 
ever  heard  of  God's  statutes  being  violated,  of 
God's  will  being  frustrated  ?  The  imagination  is 
childish.  The  divine  power  is  perfect,  which 
means  that  it  never  encounters  opposition.  Yet  I 
have  heard  theologians  aver  that  God  has  given 
man  power  to  obey  or  disobey  His  statutes  at 
pleasure.  Wherefore  then  should  they  represent 
God  as  complaining  ?  If  He  have  given  man 
power  to  obey  or  disobey,  as  he  pleases,  then  the 
exercise  of  this  power  in  either  direction,  must 
be  grateful  to  Him.  If  He  leave  me  free  to  obey 
or  disobey  Him,  you  defame  Him  when  you  make 


72  SOCIALISM    AND 

Him  resent  my  exercise  of  this  freedom.  If  you 
give  your  child  permission  to  go  to  Cambridge  or 
Roxbury  as  he  pleases,  and  then  denounce  him 
to  the  constables  for  going  to  the  latter  place,  you 
make  yourself  unworthy  of  the  child,  proving  your- 
self not  a  parent  but  a  tyrant.  The  child  would 
despise  you  if  he  were  not  your  child,  and  the 
legitimate  heir  therefore  of  your  meanness — if  you 
had  not  first  defrauded  him  of  his  fair  spiritual  pro- 
portions by  begetting  him.  No!  since  the  world 
has  stood,  the  law  of  God  has  known  no  violation. 
And  no  better  evidence  can  be  had  that  a  law  is  un- 
divine,  and  therefore  only  capable  of  violation,  than 
the    fact  of  its  having  actually  been  violated. 

I  admit  then,  that  I  am,  according  to  the  decree 
of  society,  an  evil  man.  As  measured  by  its  ap- 
pointments, by  its  institutions,  I  am  an  unmitigated 
liar,  murderer,  thief,  and  adulterer.  But  now  I  ap- 
peal to  a  higher  judicatory,  and  summon  society 
itself  as  a  criminal  before  the  bar  of  God.  Here 
stand  I,  a  creature  of  God,  a  thing  God-made  from 
the  crown  of  my  head  to  the  soul  of  my  foot. 
There  stand  certain  ordinances  of  society,  certain 
appointments  made  by  man,  which  I  have  violated. 
The  violation  is  undeniable.  It  has  not  been  once 
only  but  a  myriad  times.  It  has  been,  if  you  please, 


eiVILTZATlON.  ^3 

both  thorough  and  remorseless.  In  God's  sight  then 
where  does  the  fault  attach?  To  the  God-made 
thing,  or  the  man-made  ? 

If  we  say  "to  the  former,"  will  not  God  frown 
us  dumb  ?  Does  He  see  any  evil  in  the  work  of 
His  own  hands  ?  The  supposition  were  instantly 
fatal  to  the  universe  of  creation,  for  it  saps  the 
creative  perfection.  No,  God  decides  by  the  abso- 
lute constraint  of  His  perfection,  that  the  true  crim- 
inal in  this  case  is  society,  that  if  I,  His  child,  have 
broken  any  law,  it  was  only  because  that  law  was 
itself  or  primarily  a  violation  of  my  essential  liberty, 
the  liberty  I  have  in  Him.  How  should  I,  His 
creature,  and  therefore  as  pure  in  my  inward  parts 
as  He  himself,  become  a  thief,  unless  society  tempt- 
ed me  by  giving  some  one  else  an  exclusive  pro- 
perty in  that  which  every  want  of  my  nature  makes 
equally  appropriate  to  me  ?  How  should  I  be- 
come an  adulterer  unless  society  affirmed  some  one 
else  to  possess  an  exclusive  property  in  some  per- 
son, whom  the  very  fact  of  the  adultery  proves  to 
belong  equally  to  me  ?  How  should  I  become  a 
false-witness  and  murderer,  unless  society,  by  put- 
ting me  at  a  disadvantage  with  other  men,  by  en- 
suring them  a  superior  social  position,  and  a  more 


r 


74  SOCIALISM    ANl) 

affluent  supply  of  nature's  wants,  steadfastly  com- 
mended them  to  my  envy  and   enmity  ? 

It  is  solely  because  society  itself  violates  the 
unity  of  creation  by  the  institution  of  false  and  in- 
jurious propria  among  men,  that  I  become  a  crim- 
inal. The  divine  spirit  within  me  prompts  a  per- 
fect love  to  all  mankind — prompts  me  to  abound  in 
every  office  of  respect  and  affection.  How  shall 
this  spirit  get  actual  organization,  so  long  as  society 
arrays  me  against  every  one  else,  and  every  one 
else  against  me,  so  long  as  it  makes  my  interest 
clash  with  the  interest  of  every  man  in  the  com- 
munity? Let  society  allow  my  native  and  God- 
given  appetency  to  be  the  sole  measure  of  my  out- 
ward enjoyment,  then  my  relations  with  nature  and 
society  will  become  instantly  harmonious. 

Such  is  the  wrong  society  does  its  children.  It 
first  makes  them  scoundrels,  and  then  sets  God  to 
hunt  them  down.  It  was  not  always  thus.  There 
was  a  time  when  the  Christian  Church  had  life  and 
walked  the  earth  as  the  friend  of  man.  Society  then 
had  no  power  to  sap  the  hope  of  the  humblest 
wretch.  Let  him  have  actually  festered  with 
crime,  let  him  have  violated  every  statute  of  so- 
ciety, and  proved  himself  a  perpetual  terror  to  his 
species,  yet  society  found  no  craven  priest  to  deny  him 


CIVILIZATION.  75 

mercy  with  God.  The  church  confronted  its  utmost 
venom,  and  said  to  the  loathsome  victim,  "  confide 
in  me  and  you  shall  be  safe — receive  my  anointing 
and  you  shall  stand  absolved  from  all  guilt."  The 
church  was  then  a  power  only  and  not  an  intelli- 
gence. Tt  had  no  rationality.  It  disclaimed  all 
philosophy.  It  knew  not  and  cared  not  to  justify 
its  great  pretension-  It  knew  only  the  name  of  God, 
and  believed  only  in  his\inquestionable  sovereignty. 
Its  reverence  was  only  the  blindest  of  instincts,  yet 
that  instinct  gave  it  power  to  shelter  and  sanctify 
every  form  of  human  passion  however  actually 
perverted. 

Accordingly,  it  is  inexpressibly  touching  to  see 
with  what  infinite  assurance  the  baited  and  hunted 
criminal,  every  pore  running  blood,  and  his  tongue 
lapping  out,  as  he  fled  from  the  vengeance  of  his 
pursuers,  always  betook  himself  to  the  altar  of  God, 
to  find  peace  and  refreshment.  We  may  laugh  at 
this,  we  who  pay  our  clergy  as  we  do  our  cooks,  to 
do  us  a  prescribed  service,  that  is,  to  convert  the 
popular  hope  of  heaven  and  fear  of  hell  into  guaran- 
tees of  our  social  tranquillity.  But  the  service  done 
to  humanity  by  the  old  clergy  is  wholly  inestimable 
in  money.  The  diamonds  of  Golconda  and  the 
gold  of  California  are  of  no  worth  beside  it,  for  in 


'5'6  SOCIALISM    Al^D 

the  nascent  mind  of  society,  they  implanted  and 
inwove  the  inextinguishable  dread  of  a  power  supe- 
rior to  itself,  a  power  which  gives  to  the  humblest 
individual  a  sacredness  above  the  stability  of  its 
proudest  throne. 

Nothing  but  this  function,  the  function  of  antago- 
nizing society  and  forbidding  it  to  dominate  the  in- 
dividual life,  justifies  the  existence  of  the  church. 
If  God's  primary  thought  were  for  society,  and  not 
for  man,  if  the  main  aim  of  His  providence  were  to 
render  man  morally  good,  that  is  to  make  him  wil- 
hngly  subject  to  his  fellow-man,  then  the  church 
directly  contravened  this  intention,  and  exposed  itself 
to  the  charge  of  profligacy.  But  if  society  were 
God's  secondary  care  and  man  the  primary,  if  God 
designed  to  endow  man  with  self-sovereignty  and 
make  him  a  law  unto  himself,  if  He  would  give  the 
personal  or  aesthetic  element  supremacy,  and  make 
the  moral  and  physical  elements  completely  subor- 
dinate, then  the  church,  with  all  her  bhndness  and 
irrationality,  stands  forth  as  God's  righteous  servant. 
For  it  was  this  interest  which  the  church  unflinch- 
ingly though  unconsciously  espoused ;  it  was  this 
interest  which  it  fostered  and  developed  in  spite  of 
the  poverty  of  nature  and  the  dogmatism  of  society. 
Man's  true  individuality,  the   sovereign  or  divine 


CIVILIZATION.  77 

humanity,  was  j^et  unfulfilled  on  earth.  He  who 
had  alone  asserted  and  revealed  it  under  negative 
conditions  had  gone  away,  leaving  the  church  to 
carry  out  his  quarrel.  Thus  the  church  stood  for 
and  represented  the  sovereignty  of  the  individual  life 
over  nature  and  society.  To  this  old  ecclesiasticism 
accordingly  are  we  primarily  indebted  for  all  that 
opulence  of  private  worth  which  is  now  fast  tarnish- 
ing the  lustre  of  governments  and  teaching  man  to 
reverence  himself  above  the  longest-descended  in- 
stitutions. 

It  is,  of  course,  silly  enough  to  look  upon  the 
old  church  as  possessing  any  positive  worth,  to  look 
upon  those  filthy  old  popes  and  fat-headed  priests 
as  possessing  any  real  divine  recognition.  But 
view  them  as  representing  the  divine  humanity  still 
latent  in  time,  as  symbolizing  the  sovereign  lord  of 
nature  and  society  yet  to  come,  and  their  sanctity 
becomes  instantly  radiant  and  credible.  What 
seems  a  most  impudent  pretension  when  urged  in 
its  own  behal:";  becomes  the  most  natural  thing  in 
the  world  in  behalf  of  its  client. 

The  old  hierarchy  suffers,  because  our  eyes  have 
become  disenchanted  by  gazing  on  the  modern  one. 
The  modern  church  claims  to  be  something  in  it- 
self—-claims  to  possess  no  longer  a  symbolical  but 

5 


78  SOCIALISM    AND 

a  positive  sanctity — to  be  an  actual  divine  product 
on  the  earth.  But  in  order  to  justify  this  pretension 
and  find  favor  with  mankind,  it  is  obliged  of  course 
to  sell  itself  to  the  state,  that  is,  to  espouse  the  cur- 
rent life  of  society.  For  if  the  church  obtruded  a 
really  superior  life  upon  society,  to  that  which  so- 
ciety itself  generates,  conflict  would  ensue,  and  the 
church  would  be  incontinently  strangled.  Thus  the 
church,  now-a-days,  in  order  to  escape  being  mur- 
dered, commits  suicide.  Accordingly  "you  now  find 
no  conflict  between  church  and  state.  The  church 
ducks  her  obeisant  head,  and  takes  whatever  posi- 
tion the  state  allows  her,  giving  in  return  her  coun- 
tenance and  practical  advocacy  to  every  institution, 
corrupt  or  incorrupt,  which  society  approves. 

In  this  state  of  things  you  necessarily  miss  the 
church's  old  renown.  When  she  merges  her  ideal 
in  the  actual,  she  stultifies  herself,  becomes  extinct, 
since  her  whole  office  was  to  foretell  and  prepare 
the  way  of  a  perfect  actual.  What  is  the  use  of  a 
church  to  enforce  the  life  of  the  state  ?  What  sort 
of  a  deity  is  he  who  sanctions  the  current  morality 
of  any  political  societ}^  under  heaven,  political  or 
religious  society  either?  No  man  believes  in  such 
a  deity  e:r  animo,  but  only  by  tradition,  by  zealous 


CIVILIZATION.  79 

tuition.  Consequently  no  man  believes  in  such  a 
church. 

Thus  the  church  gave  up  all  her  power  over  the 
hunfian  heart  when  she  became  the  stipendiary  and 
tool  of  the  state,  when  she  ceased  to  storm  in  upon 
society  tidings  of  God's  irreversible  scorn.  This 
was  an  office  worthy  of  her,  to  hold  God  so  unmix- 
ed with  all  human  quarrels,  so  untouched  by  all  hu- 
man distinctions,  as  to  be  ahke  favorable  to  the 
judge  on  the  bench  and  the  felon  on  the  gibbet. 
What  a  descent  from  this  to  our  present  church — a 
church  which  has  no  ideal  beyond  the  State,  and 
instead  of  claiming,  most  conscientiously  renoimces 
the  power  of  immortal  life!  Can  such  a  church 
prefer  any  claim  upon  human  affection  save  as  a 
powerful  police  agency  ?     Preposterous  ! 

When  one  went  to  some  old  unscrupulous  Hilde- 
brand  and  laid  bare  his  deformities,  he  returned 
home  healed  of  all  disquiets,  for  he  was  sure  of 
heaven,  having  received  the  palpable  earnest  of  it 
into  his  stomach.  When  I  go  to  any  of  our  diluted 
clergy,  to  Bishop  This,  orDoctor  That,  or  Reverend 
T'other,  I  find  none  of  them  bold  enough  to  affirm 
my  salvation.  I  may  enter  either  of  their  churches 
and  diligently  pursue  all  its  ordinances,  but  whether 
my  destiny  shall  be   upwards   or  downwards  re- 


80  SOCIALISM    AND 

mains  a  wholly  inscrutable  problem,  to  be  cleared 
up  only  by  the  event.  Fie  on  such  an  imbecile 
church  !  It  is  a  mere  garnish  for  the  corruptions  of 
society,  a  mere  veil  to  soften  iniquities  which  would 
otherwise  be  intolerable. 

But  this  is  a  digression.  If  the  evils  I  have  de- 
scribed be  real,  if  civihzation  be  fraught  with  these 
and  all  other  forms  of  hindrance  to  the  divine  life, 
then  clearly  civilization  stands  condemned  by  its 
fruits,  and  has  no  title  to  prejudice  the  promise  of 
Socialism.  Socialism  claims  to  be  nothing  more 
than  a  remedy  for  the  physical  and  moral  ills  which 
inhere  in  civilization,  which  result  from  its  very 
genius.  The  whole  promise  of  Socialism  may  be 
thus  summed  up. — It  promises  to  lift  man  out  of 
the  harassing  bondage  which  he  is  under  to  nature 
and  society,  out  of  that  crushing  responsibihty 
which  he  is  under  to  his  own  body  and  his  fellow- 
man,  and  so  leave  him  subject  forever  to  God's  un- 
impeded inspiration,  leave  him,  in  fact,  the  very 
play -thing  of  God,  a  mere  pipe  for  the  finger  of 
Deity  to  play  what  stops  it  pleases.  It  proceeds 
upon  a  double  postulate,  namely,  that  every  crea- 
ture of  God,  by  virtue  of  his  creation,  is  entitled, 
1,  to  an  ample  physical  subsistence,  that  is,  to  the 
satisfaction  of  all  his  natural  appetites  ;   2,  to   an 


CIVILIZATION.  81 

ample  social  subsistence,  that  is,  to  the  respect  and 
aflfection  of  every  other  creature  of  God.  What- 
ever institution  violates  these  principles  by  non-con- 
fcrmity,  it  pronounces  tyrannous  and  void. 

Thus  Socialism  condemns,  after  a  certain  stage  of 
human  progress,  the  institution  of  limited  property. 
It  demands  for  man  an  infinite  property,  that  is  to 
say  a  property  in  universal  nature  and  in  all  the  af- 
fections and  thoughts  of  humanity.  It  is  silly  to 
charge  it  with  a  tendency  to  destroy  property.  It 
aims  indeed  to  destroy  all  merely  limited  and  con- 
ventional property,  all  such  property  as  is  held  not 
by  any  inward  fitness  of  the  subject,  but  merely  by 
external  police  or  convention  ;  but  it  aims  to  de- 
stroy even  this  property  only  in  the  pacific  way  of 
superseding  it,  that  is,  by  giving  the  subject  posses- 
sion of  the  whole  earth,  or  a  property  commensu- 
rate with  his  inward  and  essential  infinitude. 

This,  I  confess,  is  what  attracts  me  in  the  pro- 
gramme of  Socialism,  the  unconscious  service  it 
renders  to  the  divine  life  in  me,  the  complete  inau- 
guration and  fulfilment  it  affords  to  the  Christian 
hope  of  individual  perfection.  Christianity  is  a  vir- 
tual denial  of  all  mystery  to  Deity,  and  an  afiirma- 
tion  of  His  essential  intelhgibility.  It  denies  to 
Deity  any  mere  passive  or  inoperative  perfection, 


82  SOCIALISM    AND 

and  affirms  His  existence  exclusively  within  human 
conditions.  It  reveals  a  perfect  harmony  between 
God  in  His  infinitude  and  man  in  his  lowest  natural 
and  social  debasement,  even  when  devoid  of  all 
physical  grace  and  comeliness,  and  when  despised, 
cast  out,  and  rejected  of  the  best  virtue  of  his  time. 
In  short  it  affirms  the  unity  of  God  and  Man.  Two 
things  hinder  the  consciousness  of  this  unity  on  the 
part  of  man — nature  and  society,  the  one  by  limit- 
ing his  power,  the  other  by  limiting  his  sympathies  ; 
the  one  by  finiting  his  body,  the  other  by  finiting 
his  soul.  Accordingly,  the  Christ,  or  representative 
Divine  Man,  is  seen  warring  with  and  subjugating 
both  nature  and  society,  making  time  and  space 
so  fluent  and  plastic  to  his  desires  as  to  avouch  his 
actual  bodily  infinitude,  and  exerting  so  wholly  ge- 
nial an  influence  upon  the  opposite  extremes  of  so- 
ciety— saint  and  sinner,  Jew  and  Gentile, — as  to 
avouch  his  equal  spiritual  infinitude. 

Now  what  is  here  typically  reported  of  the  Christ 
is  to  be  actually  fulfilled  in  universal  humanity,  in 
every  man,  according  to  the  promise,  "  What 
things  ye  see  me  do,  ye  shall  do  also,  and  greater 
things  than  these."  Nature  and  society  are  to  be 
glorified  into  the  footstool  of  Almighty  God,  en- 
shrined in   every  human   bosom.     I  have  no  idea 


CIVILIZATION.  8& 

that  man  will  ever  be  able  literally  to  change  water 
into  wine,  or  to  feed  his  body  upon  inadequate  food, 
or  to  pass  through  stone  walls  at  pleasure,  or  to  sa- 
tisfy the  tax-gatherer  out  of  the  mouth  of  fishes. 
But  I  believe  that  the  various  internal  reality  of 
these  symbols  will  be  fully  accomplished  in  us, 
that  nature  and  society  will  become  in  the  progress 
of  science  so  vivid  with  divine  meaning,  that  the 
infinite  desire  of  man  will  receive  a  complete  present 
satisfaction,  and  that  instead  of  our  relegating  the 
vision  of  God,  as  now,  to  an  exclusively  post-mor- 
tem experience,  He  will  become  revealed  to  the 
natural  senses  with  such  an  emphasis  as  to  make 
the  most  frolicsome  sports  of  childhood  more  wor- 
shipful than  all  piety. 

Now  Socialism  alone  supplies  the  science  of  this 
great  consummation.  It  reveals  the  incessant  ope- 
ration of  laws  by  which  man's  physical  and  social 
relations  will  be  brought  into  the  complete  subjec- 
tion of  his  inward  or  divine  personality.  It  is  the 
demonstration  of  a  plenary  unity  between  man  and 
nature  and  man  and  man.  It  convinces  me  of  infi- 
nitely more  extended  relations  to  nature  than  those 
which  now  define  me,  and  of  infinitely  sweeter  ties 
with  man  than  those  which  bind  me  to  the  Tom, 


-<' 


84 


SOCIALISM    AND 


Dick  and  Harry  of  my  present  chance  acquaint- 
anceship. 

Let  this  unity  then  become  visible,  become  organ- 
ized, and  I  shall  instantly  realize  the  divine  free- 
dom, realize  my  true  and  infinite  selfhood.  For 
then  I  shall  become  released  from  this  finite  and 
false  proprium  which  now  enslaves  me  and  keeps 
me  groveUing  in  the  dust.  If  I  am  one  with  nature 
and  my  fellow-man,  if  there  be  a  sovereign  unity 
and  not  enmity  pervading  all  our  reciprocal  rela- 
tions, then  clearly  every  appetite  and  affection  both 
of  my  physical  and  moral  nature  become  instantly 
legitimated,  and  I  stand  henceforth  absolved  from 
all  defilement,  a  new  creature  of  God  triumphant 
over  death  and  hell,  nay  more,  taking  death  and 
hell  into  friendly  subjection,  and  suffusing  their 
hitherto  dusk  and  dejected  visages  with  the  roseate 
flush  of  omnipresent  and  omnipotent  Life. 

I  repeat  that  the  curse  of  our  present  ties,  that 
which  eliminates  all  their  poetry,  is  our  limited  pro- 
perty in  men  and  things,  is  the  finite  selfhood  im- 
posed on  us  by  the  present  evil  world.  My  internal 
property  or  selfhood,  that  which  God  gives  me,  is 
nothing  short  of  infinite,  is  Himself  in  truth.  To 
match  this  divine  internal,  nature  gives  me  my 
feeble  body,  society  gives  me  a  petty  score  of  rela- 


CIVILIZATION.  85 

lives  and  friends.  Whilst  I  accept  this  niggardly 
service  from  nature  and  society,  whilst  I  strive  to 
compel  my  internal  aspirations  within  these  outward 
bounds,  I  suffer  torments  which  are  appeased  only 
to  be  renewed.  This  body  is  incompetent  to  the 
subjugation  of  nature  which  my  spirit  demands.  I 
may  battle  stoutly  for  a  while,  but  I  accomplish 
after  all  only  a  grave.  But  suppose  the  battle  to 
have  been  never  so  successful  in  a  material  point  of 
view,  suppose  me  to  have  realized  any  amount  of 
superfluous  potatoes,  yet  after  all  how  mere  a  pota- 
to-cask do  I  remain,  destitute  of  inward  pith  and 
riches  !  The  battle  with  nature,  the  battle  for  ani- 
mal subsistence,  leaves  us  merely  animal,  leaves  us 
actually  unvivified  of  God,  leaves  us  only  the  dim- 
mest and  most  fluctuating  hope  of  God  in  realms  be- 
yond the  grave. 

But  society  imposes  the  most  torturing  disability. 
AffiUating  me  to  one  man,  and  that  man  incapable 
seven  times  out  of  eight  of  supplying  my  bare  neces- 
sities ;  restricting  me  to  the  fraternity  of  two  or 
three  persons  whom  probably  the  penury  of  our 
joint  resources  converts  into  mutual  rivals  and  foes; 
committing  my  profoundest  passional  interests  to 
the  keeping  of  one  frail  will ;  turning  the  most  sa- 
cred depths  of  passion  within  me  into  an  arena  of 

5* 


86  SOCIALISM    AND 

public  traffic,  into  material  of  habitual  and  vulgar 
gossip ;  society  does  its  utmost  to  ensure  me  a  daily 
profanation,  and  turn  God's  otherwise  joyful  force 
in  me  into  the  force  of  a  giant  despair,  into  the  force 
of  an  eventual  deadly  retribution. 

Let  any  one  consider  for  a  moment  the  best  en- 
dowment he  gets  from  present  society,  or  the  extent 
of  limitation  it  imposes  upon  him,  and  then  reply 
whether  it  can  be  long  tolerable  to  God. 

In  the  first  place,  we  have  the  tie  of  the  insulated 
family,  which  enjoins  a  superior  affection  to  all  in- 
volved in  it  than  to  any  others.  Let  my  father's 
interests  clash  with  his  Neighbors  ;  let  my  mother 
and  the  mother  of  any  body  else,  come  into  rivalry  ; 
let  my  brother  or  sister  conceive  a  quarrel  with  any 
unrelated  person  :  you  know  that  in  all  these  cases 
I  am  a  natural  partisan,  and  that  if  I  should  practi- 
cally disown  the  obligation,  that  blissful  home  which 
furnishes  the  theme  of  so  much  sincere  as  well  as 
dishonest  sentimentality,  would  become  on  the 
instant  a  very  hell  incapable  of  pacification.  Con- 
duct so  unnatural  on  my  part,  no  matter  how  just 
it  might  be  in  the  abstract,  would  convert  these  na- 
tural brethren  into  my  envenomed  foes,  and  even 
disqualif}^  me  for  an}^  very  cordial  welcome  from 
their  original  antagonist,  the  person  for  whose  cause 


CIVILIZATION.  67 

I  bad  forsaken  theirs.  Take  the  tie  of  township  or 
country,  that  which  generates  the  old-fashioned 
virtue  called  patriotism,  and  you  see  it  to  be  full  of 
the  same  iniquitious  bondage. 

In  fact  there  exists  no  tie  either  natural  or  social, 
as  society  is  now  constituted,  which  does  not  tend  to 
slavery,  which  does  not  cheat  man's  soul  of  its  fair 
proportions.  I  love  my  father  and  mother,  my  bro- 
ther and  sister,  but  I  deny  their  unconditional  pro- 
perty in  me.  Society  having  been  incompetent 
hitherto  to  fulfil  its  duties  to  me,  has  deputed  the 
care  and  sustenance  of  my  tender  years  to  them.  I 
acknowledge  gratefully  the  kindness  I  have  receiv- 
ed at  their  hands.  But  if  they  ask  any  other  reward 
for  this  kindness  than  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  me 
a  man,  if  they  expect  me  to  continue  their  humble 
satellite  and  partisan,  instead  of  God's  conscript 
and  votary  solely,  I  am  bound  to  disappoint  them. 
I  will  be  the  property  of  no  person,  and  I  will  ac- 
cept property  in  no  person.  I  will  be  the  son  of  my 
father,  and  the  husband  of  my  wife,  and  the  parent 
of  my  child,  but  I  will  be  all  these  things  in  a  tho- 
roughly divine  way,  or  only  as  they  involve  no  ob- 
loquy to  my  inward  righteousness,  onl}^  as  they 
impose  no  injustice  on  me  toward  others. 

You  all  remember  those  grand  mystic  sayings  of 


8^  SOCIALISM     AND 

the  Christ,  "  whoso  will  lose  his  life  in  this  world 
shall  keep  it  unto  life  eternal,"  and  . "  whoso  will 
leave  father  or  mother,  or  brother  or  sister,  or  wife 
or  child,  for  my  sake,  shall  find  all  these  relations 
multiplied  a  hundred-fold."  Now  what  is  the  great 
spiritual  burden  of  these  divine  words,  for  you  know 
every  divine  word  is  so  mainly  from  within.  Is  it 
not  that  our  primary  dignity  is  divine,  and  flows 
from  God  within  us  instead  of  from  our  outward 
relations?  Is  it  not  that  each  of  us  is  under  para- 
mount allegiance  to  his  own  spontaneous  life,  and 
that  if  we  insist  first  on  the  fulfilment  of  this 
allegiance,  all  these  secondary  or  derivative  rela- 
tions will  fall  of  themselves  into  harmony  ? 

But  you  know  this  truth  experimentally  also. 
You  know  that  you  never  find  perfect  peace  or  con- 
tentment in  your  outward  and  finite  proprium.  You 
know  by  experience  that  you  cannot  set  your  life's 
happiness  upon  any  outward  possession,  be  it  wife 
or  child,  or  riches,  without  an  incessant  and  shud- 
dering dread  of  betrayal.  The  infinite  faculty  with- 
in you  steadfastly  refuses  these  limited  satisfactions. 
But  when  you  rejoice  first  of  all  in  that  infinite  fa- 
culty, when  you  seek  above  all  things  to  give  it  de- 
velopment by  the  medium  of  appropriate  action, 
by  the  medium  of  Art,  then  the  house  of  your  peace 


CIVILIZATION.  89 

is  built  upon  a  rock,  against  which  the  windows  of 
heaven  are  opened  in  vain.  Let  a  man  then  re- 
nounce all  enforced  property  in  persons  and  things, 
accepting  only  such  things  and  persons  as  actually 
gravitate  to  him  ;  let  him  renounce  all  tale-bearing 
and  recourse  to  the  police,  and  come  into  universal 
candor,  into  complete  whiteness  of  soul  towards  all 
men  and  things,  how  instantly  would  every  heart 
expand  to  him  as  to  God's  melting  sunshine,  and 
the  earth  swarm  with  fragrant  kisses  for  his  feet! 
To  become  possible,  however,  in  any  great  degree 
for  the  individual  man,  this  quality  of  manhood 
must  first  become  universal,  and  to  make  it  univer- 
sal is  the  function  of  Socialism,  is  the  aim  of  social 
science.  Socialism  lifts  us  out  of  these  frivolous 
and  pottering  responsibilities  we  are  under  to  man, 
and  leaves  us  under  responsibility  to  God  alone,  or 
our  inmost  life.  The  way  it  does  this,  is  by  reveal- 
ing the  existence  and  operation  of  laws,  which  shall 
provide  every  man,  woman,  and  child,  the  orderly 
and  ample  satisfaction  of  their  natural  appetites  and 
affections,  the  unhmited  expansion  of  their  intellect, 
and  the  complete  education  of  their  faculty  of  action, 
however  infinitely  various  that  faculty  may  be.  In 
short  it  reveals  the  method  of  man's  perpetual  re-crea- 
tion, a  re-creation  so  complete  that  every  day  shall 


90  SOCIALISM    AND 

come  clad  to  him  with  all  the  freshness  of  God's  dewy 
hand,  stifling  both  memory  and  hope  in  the  ampli- 
tude of  a  present  bliss.  Suppose  Socialism  then  to 
have  attained  its  end,  suppose  the  Divine  Life  to  have 
become  by  its  means  universahzed,  what  a  temple 
of  enchantment  this  lacerated  earth  would  become  ! 
For  when  all  things  and  persons  become  free,  be- 
come self-pronounced,  then  a  universal  reverence 
and  truth  spring  up,  every  manifestation  of  charac- 
ter claiming  and  enjoying  the  homage  we  now  pay 
only  to  unmanifested  Deity. 

Besides  we  degrade  and  disesteem  whatsoever 
we  absolutely  own.  We  degrade  by  owning  and 
just  in  the  degree  of  our  owning.  It  is  a  proverb, 
that  no  man  values  the  good  he  has  in  hand,  but 
only  that  which  is  to  come.  This  is  signally  true 
in  respect  to  persons.  We  degrade  and  disesteem 
every  person  we  own  absolutely,  every  person 
bound  to  us  by  any  other  tenure  than  his  own  spon- 
taneous affection.  Of  course  one  values  one's  bro- 
thers and  sisters  in  the  present  state  of  things,  if 
from  nothing  else,  then  from  self-love ;  for  society 
is  so  unfriendly  and  torpid  to  us  that  the  domestic 
hearth  gathers  a  warmth  not  wholly  its  own.  But 
who  is  ever  found  idealizing  a  brother  or  sister? 
Our  instinct  of  Friendship  is  profaned  where  a  bro- 


CIVILIZATION.  91 

ther  is  the  claimant,  and  Love  expires  of  sheer  self- 
loathing  in  the  presence  of  a  sister. 

It  is  the  indispensable  condition  of  a  perfect  re- 
spect, that  a  person  be  inwardly  individualized,  that 
is,  possess  the  complete  supremacy  of  his  own  ac- 
tions.    Then  all  his  relations  are  of  an  inevitable 
dignity.     When  the  wife  of  Quisquis  declined  his 
merely  dutiful  or  voluntary  allegiance,  when  she  in- 
sisted  upon,  erasing  the  marriage-bond  as  a  stain 
upon  his  truth,  and  giving  to  their  relation  the  sole 
sanction  of  spontaneity,  her  husband  found  that  re- 
lation instantly  glorified,  or  purged  of  its  abundant 
meanness.     His  home  became  henceforth  a  livelier 
sanctuary  than  the  church,  and  his  wife  a  diviner 
page  than  all  the   prophets.     So  also  one's  child, 
how  tiresome  he  grows  when  he  does  nothing  morn- 
ing, noon  or  night,  but  reflect  the  paternal  dulness, 
I  ^    when  he  is  sedulous  to  do  all  the  father  prescribes 
v>     and  avoid    all   the  mother   condemns !     Yet   how 
"^     beautiful   he  becomes,   when  he    ever   and  anon 
\^    flashes  forth   some  spontaneous  grace,  some  self- 
^  V     prompted  courtesy  ! 

^^         Why  is  it  esteemed  disgraceful  for  the  mature 

^      man   to  consult  his  natural   father  and  mother  in 

^  ^     every  enterprise,  and  be  led  by  their  advice  ?  The 

cause  of  this  judgment  is  spiritual,  and  lies  in    the 


92  SOCIALISM    AND 

truth  that  man  is  destined  by  the  fact  of  his  divine 
genesis  to  self-sufficiency,  to  self-government,  that 
he  is  destined  to  find  all  guidance  within  him  and 
none  whatever  without  him,  and  that  he  cannot 
persist  accordingly  in  the  infantile  habit  of  seeking 
help  beyond  himself  without  flagrant  detriment  to 
his  manhood,  to  his  destiny.  All  our  natural  and 
social  phenomena,  in  fact,  are  symbolic,  and  have 
no  worth  apart  from  the  spiritual  verities  they  em- 
balm and  typify. 

To  conclude.  Socialism  promises  to  make  God's 
great  life  in  man  possible,  promises  to  make  all  our 
relations  so  just,  so  beautiful  and  helpful,  that  we 
shall  be  no  longer  conscious  of  finiteness,  of  imper- 
fection, but  only  of  life  and  power  utterly  infinite. 
I  am  not  able  to  satisfy  any  one's  reasonable  curi- 
osity on  this  subject.  Every  one  who  trusts  in  a 
living  and  therefore  active  God,  in  that  God  who  is 
quite  as  active  and  original  in  our  day  as  He  was 
six  thousand  years  ago,  in  short  every  one  whose 
hope  for  humanity  is  alert,  behooves  to  acquaint 
himself  forthwith  with  the  marvellous  literature  of 
Sociafism,  above  all  with  the  writings  of  Charles 
Fourier.  You  will  doubdess  find  in  Fourier  things 
of  an  apostolic  hardness  to  the  understanding  ;  you 
will  find  many  things  to  startle,  many  things  per- 


CIVILIZATION.  93 

haps  to  disgust  you ;  but  you  will  find  vastly  more 
both  in  the  way  of  criticism  and  of  constructive 
science  to  satisfy  and  invigorate  j^our  understand- 
ing, while  such  glimpses  will  open  on  every  hand 
of  God's  ravishing  harmonies  yet  to  ensue  on  earth, 
that  your  imagination  will  fairly  ache  with  content- 
ment, and  plead  to  be  let  off. 

These  are  what  you  will  find  in  Fourier,  pro- 
vided you  have  no  secret  interest  dogging  your  can- 
dor and  watching  to  betray  it.  Let  me  also  tell 
you  what  you  will  not  find  there.  You  will  find 
no  such  defaming  thought  of  God  as  makes  His 
glory  to  depend  upon  the  antagonism  of  His  crea- 
ture's shame.  You  will  find  no  allegation  of  an  es- 
sential and  eternal  contrariety  between  man  and 
his  creative  source.  Whatever  be  Fourier's  er- 
rors and  faults,  this  crowning  and  bottomless  in- 
famy by  no  means  attaches  to  him.  On  the  con- 
trary, if  the  highest  homage  paid  to  Deity  be  that  of 
the  understanding,  then  Fourier's  piety  may  safe- 
ly claim  pre-eminence.  For  it  was  not  a  tradition- 
al piety,  that  piety  of  habit  which  keeps  our 
churches  open — and  cheerless  ;  nor  was  it  a  selfish 
piety,  the  piety  which  springs  from  jail-bird  con- 
ceptions of  Deity,  and  paints  him  as  a  colossal 
spider  bestriding  the  web  of  destiny  and  victimizing 


94  SOCIALISM  AND    CIVILIZATION. 

with  fell  alacrity  every  heedless  human  fly  that 
gets  entangled  in  it ;  but  a  piety  as  broad  as  human 
science,  co-extensive  in  fact  with  the  sphere  of  his 
senses,  for  its  prayers  were  the  passions  or  wants 
of  the  universal  human  heart,  its  praises  the  laws 
or  methods  of  the  human  understanding,  and  its 
deeds  the  innumerable  forms  of  spontaneous  human 
action, 


MORALITY 

AND 

THE     PERFECT     LIFE. 


LECTURE. 


Gentlemen: — 

The  subject  of  the  present  Lecture,  is  the  rela- 
tion between  man's  moral  experience  and  his  expe- 
rience of  the  divine  or  perfect  life.  Two  doctrines 
exist  in  the  world,  that  of  Moralism,  which  affirms 
man's  rightful  subjection  to  nature  and  society  ;  and 
that  of  the  Christ,  or  Divine  Man,  which  affirms 
man's  rightful  subjection  only  to  God  ;  and  these 
two  are  so  contrary  one  to  the  other  as  to  fill  the 
whole  earth  with  the  dust  and  the  noise  of  their  con- 
tention. Let  us  enquire  to  which  of  them  the  even- 
tual triumph  is  due. 

In  the  four  gospels,  Christianity  or  the  doctrine  of 

a  Divine  Natural  Humanity,  is   set  forth  under  a 
double  aspect,  a  literal  and  a  spiritual  one.     The 


98  MORALITY    AND 

Christ,  or  Divine  Man,  claims  for  himself  a  double 
advent,  one  fleshly  and  humble,  arising  from  the  op- 
position of  nature  and  society,  the  other  spiritual 
and  glorious,  arising  from  the  consent  of  nature  and 
society.  Not  only  does  the  Christ  challenge  to  him- 
self this  double  advent,  but  he  invariably  makes 
the  humble  one  necessary  to  the  glorious  one,  makes 
the  one  an  inseparable  basis  or  condition  of  the 
other. 

If  we  ask  the  philosophy  of  this  connection,  if  we 
ask  the  reason  why  God  cannot  perfectly  reveal 
Himself  in  humanity,  without  first  revealing  Him- 
self imperfectly ;  why  He  cannot  reveal  Himself 
in  a  manner  to  engage  the  cordial  acknowledgment 
of  society,  without  first  revealing  Himself  in  a 
manner  to  provoke  its  contempt  and  denial ;  we 
shall  find  ourselves  instantly  referred  to  the  end  or 
object  which  God  proposes  in  creation.  Of  course, 
when  I  speak  of  God  as  proposing  an  end  to  Him- 
self, or  as  capable  of  reflective  action,  you  will  grant 
me  indulgence,  knowing  that  this  is  a  mere  logical 
necessit}'-,  a  necessity  arising  out  of  the  infirmity  of 
our  thought,  and  that  I  do  not  mean  seriously  to  as- 
cribe conditions  of  space  and  time  to  the  divine  ac- 
tion. 

The  end  then  which  God  proposes  in  creation,  is 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  9*9 

the  communication  of  Himself  to  the  creature. 
This  follows  from  the  fact  that  God  is  life  or  being 
itself.  He  does  not  possess  being  or  life.  He  is  it. 
He  constitutes  it.  Consequently  in  giving  being  or 
life  to  the  creature,  he  gives  Himself  to  the 
creature.  God,  says  Swedenborg,  would  dwell 
in  the  creature  as  in  Himself.  That  is  to  say, 
He  would  be  in  the  creature  his  very  inmost  and 
vital  self,  endowing  him  with  a  sweetness  of  affec- 
tion, with  a  reach  of  intellect,  and  a  power  of  ac- 
tion so  spontaneous  and  infinite  as  to  yield  every- 
where and  always  the  lavish  demonstration  of  His 
presence. 

You  cannot  conceive  this  point  too  strictly,  for  it 
is  the  very  corner-stone  of  a  scientific  cosmology. 
Let  me  therefore  repeat  it.  Because  God  is  Life 
itself,  life  in  its  essence.  He  cannot  impart  life  save 
by  imparting  Himself  He  cannot  impart  it  by 
transferring  it,  according  to  the  vulgar  conception, 
from  Himself  to  another,  because,  inasmuch  as  He 
is  life,  inasmuch  as  He  constitutes  it,  this  would  be 
to  transfer  Himself  from  Himself,  or  divide  Him- 
self, which  is  absurd.  Creation  consequently  does 
not  imply  a  transfer  of  life  from  God  Himself  to  an- 
other; it  implies  the  communication  of  His  integral 
or  infinite  self  to  another. 


100  MORALITY    AND 

But  now  you  will  admit  that  I  cannot  enjoy  tbis 
divine  communication  save  in  so  far  as  I  am  pre- 
pared for  it.  I  must  be  a  vessel,  a  form,  a  subject, 
receptive  of  God,  before  He  can  communicate  Him- 
self to  me.  If  I  were  destitute  of  this  previous  sub- 
jectivity, you  could  not  properly  say  that  God  com- 
municated Himself  to  me  ;  you  could  only  say  that 
He  transformed  or  transmuted  Himself  into  me, 
thus  merging  the  Creator  in  the  creature,  and  so 
falsifying  both.  I  must  then  be  a  vessel,  a  house,  a 
tabernacle,  a  temple,  in  short  a  form,  into  which 
God  may  come  and  abide  ;  thus  and  not  otherwise 
may  He  be  truly  said  to  communicate  Himself  to 
me. 

But  if  this  be  so,  if  the  divine  communication  to 
the  creature  be  contingent  upon  the  latter's  capacity 
of  reception,  then  manifestly  the  process  of  creation 
involves  or  necessitates  a  two-fold  consciousness  on 
the  part  of  the  creature  ;  first  a  finite  or  imperfect 
consciousness,  or  a  consciousness  of  a  selfhood  dis- 
tinct from  God ;  and  second,  an  infinite  or  perfect 
consciousness,  a  consciousness  of  a  selfhood  united 
with  God.  The  end  of  God  in  my  creation  is  to  im- 
part Himself  to  me,  to  make  Himself  over  to  me 
with  all  His  infinite  resources  of  love,  wisdom,  and 
power.     But  in  order  to  this  end  I  must  first  exist, 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  101 

must  first  have  a  quasi  selfhood,  a  conditional  or 
finite  existence,  by  the  medium  of  which  I  may  be- 
come introduced,  as  it  were,  to  my  divine  bride- 
groom, and  give  myself  away  in  an  eternal  espou- 
sals. 

Now  a  finite  or  conditional  existence  is  the  result 
of  a  balance  or  equilibrium  between  two  opposite 
forces.  All  finite  experience  is  generated  of  op- 
position. The  orbit  or  individuality  of  the  earth,  for 
example,  results  from  a  perfect  balance  of  the  re- 
pellent and  attractive  influences  of  the  sun,  a  per- 
fect equilibrium  of  its  centrifugal  and  centripetal 
motions.  Destroy  either  of  these  motions,  and  the 
earth  becomes,  in  the  one  case,  dissipated  in  space-, 
in  the  other  re-absorbed  in  the  sun.  Precisely  simi- 
lar is  the  genesis  of  man's  finite  experience.  He 
becomes  self-conscious,  self-defined,  by  the  expe- 
rience of  two  opposite  laws  or  principles  inciting 
his  activity,  which  laws  or  principles  are  variously 
named,  the  o.ic  external  the  other  internal,  the  one 
public  the  other  private,  the  one  evil  the  other  good, 
the  one  infernal  the  other  celestial. 
■  The  first  of  these  principles  is  self-love.  It  an- 
swers to  the  projectile  or  centrifugal  force  of  nature, 
and  appears  to  bear  the  creature  away  from  hu- 
manity, away  from  the  centre    of  human  life  and 

G 


102  MORALITY    AND 

energy  ;  the  relation  of  the  race  towards  him  being 
one  meanwhile  of  repulsion.  The  second  law  or 
force  bears  the  name  of  charity  or  benevolence.  It 
answers  to  the  centripetal  force  of  nature,  and  ap- 
pears to  bring  the  creature  back  again  to  the  heart 
of  humanity,  the  relation  of  the  race  towards  him 
being  now  one  of  attraction,  and  this  attraction  is  so 
potent  that  if  it  were  not  for  the  counterbalance 
aforesaid,  the  creature  would  lose  his  self-conscious- 
ness, and  become  swallowed  up  in  the  race,  to  the 
complete  frustration  of  creation.  The  operation  of 
either  law  unchecked  by  the  other,  would  be  fatal 
to  the  finite  consciousness :  for  the  former  would 
affirm  the  individual  to  the  denial  of  the  universal, 
while  the  latter  would  affirm  the  universal  to  the 
denial  of  the  individual,  and  these  being  correlative, 
the  denial  of  one  is  a  virtual  denial  of  both. 

Man's  finite  selfhood  or  experience  then  de- 
mands for  its  perfect  development  an  exact  balance 
or  equilibrium  of  these  two  loves,  self-love  and  bro- 
therly love,  or  charity.  As  the  orbit  or  individual- 
ity of  any  planet  reflects  the  perfect  balance  of  its 
centrifugal  and  centripetal  tendencies,  so  the  or- 
bitual  or  normal  life  of  man  reflects  the  perfect  bal- 
ance of  his  internal  and  external  self,  of  charity  and 
self-love,  of  good  and  evil,  of  heaven  and  hell. 


THE    PERFECT     LIFE.  103 

How  then  does  this  finite  and  preliminary  expe- 
rience of  mine  become  elaborated  ?  What  consti- 
tutes its  apparatus?  Nature  and  society.  My 
experience  of  the  natural  and  the  moral  life  is  what 
gives  me  a  finite  consciousness,  a  consciousness  of 
a  selfhood  distinct  from  every  other  self.  My  re- 
lations to  nature  incessantly  inspire  the  sentiment 
of  self-love.  My  relations  to  society,  or  to  my  fel- 
low man,  as  incessantly  inspire  the  counter  senti- 
ment of  charity  or  brotherly-love.  Nature  subjects 
me  to  the  operation  of  self-love  by  the  various  stimu- 
lants it  offers  to  my  senses,  leading  me  to  seek 
their  continual  and  highest  possible  gratification. 
Society,  or  the  fellowship  of  my  kind,  subjects  me 
to  the  equal  operation  of  charity  or  neighborly  love, 
by  the  various  incitements  it  offers  to  my  affections, 
leading  me  to  seek  their  continual  and  highest  pos- 
sible gratification.  My  normal  state  or  condition 
is  that  which  exactly  harmonizes  or  equilibrates 
these  two  forces.  In  the  exact  ratio  of  the  prepon- 
derance of  either  force  over  the  other,  my  condi- 
tion becomes  morbid,  and  my  action  vicious. 

I  say  that  the  normal  state  of  man  exacts  the 
perfectly  balanced  or  harmonic  operation  of  these 
principles,  because  man's  perfection  as  the  crea- 
ture of  God  requires  that  he  act  of  himself,  or  freely 


104  MORALITY    AND 

and  without  any  impediment  ah  extra,  God  the 
creator  is  infinite  or  perfect,  being  sufficient  unto 
Himself.  And  He  is  sufficient  unto  Himself,  only 
because  His  action  is  self-generated,  or  obeys  no 
outward  end.  This  being  the  case  with  the  crea- 
tor, and  the  creature  being  necessarily  only  His 
image  or  reflection,  it  follows  that  the  creature  must 
exhibit  a  like  infinitude  or  perfection.  It  follows 
that  he  also  must  be  sufficient  unto  himself,  or  ex- 
hibit a  purely  self-derived  activity,  an  activity  which 
denies  any  outward  motive  or  impulsion.  And  the 
creature  cannot  exhibit  this  perfection,  this  self- 
sufficiency,  so  long  as  either  nature  or  society  do- 
minates him,  so  long  as  either  force  exerts  a  com- 
manding  influence  upon  his  activity.  Whenever 
this  phenomenon  occurs  consequently,  he  manifests 
a  diseased  or  abnormal  life,  his  action  being  per- 
verted and  inhuman. 

How  then  practically,  or  in  point  of  fact,  does  this 
abnormal  life  of  man  come  about?  How  does  it 
happen  that  man,  the  creature  of  God,  and  there- 
fore essentially  or  inwardly  perfect,  comes  to  expe- 
rience the  discordant  operation  of  these  laws  and 
to  exhibit  a  consequently  infirm  activity  ? 

The  explanation  of  this  phenomenon  lies  in  the 
fact  that  man's  perfect   or  infinite  selfhood,    that 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  105 

which  he  derives  from  God,  becomes  evolved  only 
by  the  gradual  elimination  or  removal  of  his  finite 
selfhood,  that  which  he  derives  from  nature  and 
society.  While  this  finite  selfhood  exists  in  full 
force,  he  remains  unconscious  of  his  true  or  infinite 
one  ;  and  it  is  only  as  he  puts  the  former  away  from 
him  accordingly,  only  as  he  eliminates  or  puts  it  out 
of  doors,  making  it  rnerely  formal  and  natural,  that 
the  latter  flows  in  and  becomes  established.  Now 
this  process  of  eliminating  the  finite  selfhood  de- 
pends altogether  upon  our  experience  of  its  unfit- 
ness to  satisfy  our  essential  nature.  The  more 
vivid  and  intense  the  latter  experience,  the  more 
thorough  and  consummate  will  be  the  consequent 
process  of  elimination.  All  this  will  become  very 
plain  to  you  after  briefly  considering  the  constitu- 
tion of  our  finite  selfhood  or  experience. 

In  the  first  place,  Nature  gives  me  a  bodily  indi- 
viduality, distinct  from  all  other  bodies.  Then  So- 
ciety guarantees  me  an  exclusive  property  or  self- 
hood in  this  body,  gives  me  a  title  to  its  possession 
good  against  every  other  individual.  If  it  were  not 
for  the  phenomenon  of  society  or  fellowship  among 
men,  if  men  were  simply  gregarious  like  sheep,  then 
with  their  tremendous  individuality  they  would 
soon   exterminate  each   other.      First,   the  strong 


106  MORALITY    AND 

would  exterminate  the  weak,  then  the  more  strong 
the  less  strong,  until  you  would  finally  get  down  to 
the  solitary  strongest  man,  dismal  denizen  of  the 
unpeopled  planet.  It  is  society  then  which  de- 
velopes  my  selfhood  or  property  in  my  natural 
body.     How  does  it  do  this  ? 

By  various  means.  Primarily,  by  means  of  the 
family  institution.  The  domestic  guardianship  pro- 
vided for  me  by  society,  ensures  the  care  of  my  in- 
fant existence,  and  the  supply  of  its  most  urgent 
wants.  Secondly,  by  means  of  its  municipal  and 
politicar  institutions,  which  afford  me  an  ampler 
field  of  existence  than  the  family  supplies,  and  still 
further  develope  my  instincts  of  action.  Thirdly,  by 
means  of  its  institutes  of  education,  which  enlarge 
my  knowledge  of  nature  and  man,  and  incite  me  to 
a  proportionately  enlarged  activity.  Thus  you  per- 
ceive that  we  derive  from  nature  and  society  a  self- 
hood intrinsically  finite,  finited  successively  by  our 
relations  to  our  own  body  or  outlying  nature,  to  our 
natural  progenitors  and  the  inmates  of  home,  to  our 
fellow-townsmen,  to  our  fellow-countrymen,  and  to 
the  men  of  other  lands. 

Such  is  the  constitution  of  the  selfhood  we  de- 
rive from  nature  and  society,  inevitably  finite  or  im- 
perfect.    First  of  all  it  is  limited  to  the  body,  or  the 


THE    PERFECT  LIFE.  107 

experience  of  the  five  senses,  shut  up  as  it  were 
to  a  pin's  point  in  space  and  time  ;  and  when  after- 
wards through  the  fostering  care  of  society,  it  be- 
comes developed  and  enlarged,  it  still  remains  finite, 
still  falls  short  of  its  rightful  infinitude,  of  that  infin- 
itude which  belongs  to  it  by  virtue  of  its  creation. 
For  you  will  admit  that  society  has  hitherto  done 
nothing  to  perfect  man.  Its  institutions  have  in- 
deed marked  an  expanding  consciousness  within 
him,  but  the  most  advanced  of  them  fail  to  give  him 
perfect  enfranchisement,  fail  to  express  that  rela- 
tion of  perfect  unity  which  he  is  under  to  nature  and 
his  fellow-man,  by  virtue  of  his  divine  original  or 
source.  Let  us,  for  a  moment,  recount  the  succes- 
sive steps  of  our  social  progress,  and  observe  when 
we  shall  have  reached  the  end,  how  inadequately 
society  yet  serves  our  true  individuality. 

Society  means  fellowship,  nothing  more  and  no- 
thing less.  A  perfect  or  imperfect  society  conse- 
quently means  a  perfect  or  imperfect  fellowship 
among  men.  But  now  you  know  that  all  true  fel- 
lowship among  men  is  spontaneous,  that  it  has  an 
inward  or  spiritual  roo|,  instead  of  an  outward  or 
material  one.  Men  may  indeed  exhibit  an  apimrent 
fellowship  with  one  another  while  striving  to  supply 
their  common  natural  wants  ;  but  this   fellowship 


108  MORALITY    AND 

being  outwardly  generated  or  imposed,  is  only  ap- 
parent. Each  of  the  parties  to  it  in  truth  is  seeking 
only  to  help  himself  by  the  aid  of  the  others,  and 
consequently  when  this  end  is  attained,  their  friend- 
ship is  dissolved,  and  the  parties  know  each  other 
no  longer.  The  present  relation  of  master  and  ser- 
vant, of  employer  and  laborer,  or  of  two  business 
partners,  illustrates  this  spurious  and  evanescent 
fellowship. 

A  true  fellowship  or  society  then  among  men  has 
an  internal  ground  or  origin,  springs  from  their 
spontaneous  sympathies  and  attractions.  Its  foun- 
dation is  the  unity  of  human  nature,  a  unity  which 
exacts  the  utmost  variety  or  distinction  in  the  ele- 
ments composing  it.  Exactly  in  the  degree  in 
which  these  various  elements  become  freely  as- 
serted, will  their  unity  be  manifested,  will  human 
society  become  perfected.  The  case  herein  is 
precisely  similar  to  a  musical  harmony.  The  har- 
mony is  grand  or  complete  just  in  the  degree  that 
its  elemental  notes  are  relatively  various  and  dis- 
tinct. If  the  notes  are  all  accordant  with  each 
other,  the  result  is  at  best  a  simple  melody.  But 
if  each  note  gives  a  distinct  sound  from  every  other, 
then  the  result  is  a  grand  and  rapturous  harmony 
that  lifts  the  soul  to  God.     So  in  human  society,  if 


THE  PERFECT  LIFE.  109 

each  member  be  similar  in  genius,  in  taste,  in  action 
to  every  other,  we  have  at  best  a  dismal  monotony, 
a  mere  mush  of  mutual  deference  and  apology. 
But  if  each  is  distinctively  himself,  or  sharply  indi- 
vidualized from  every  other,  then  we  have  a  grand 
choral  life  hymning  the  infinitely  various  graces  of 
the  divine  unity. 

Human  society  must,  therefore,  be  a  very  gradual 
achievment.  For  the  unity  which  binds  man  to 
the  race  is  not  an  obvious  fact,  or  a  fact  visible  to 
the  senses.  It  is  a  fact  hidden  in  God.  The  fact 
which  is  visible  to  the  senses,  is  the  infinite  variety 
of  the  race.  Variety  is  the  only  visible  form  or 
revelation  of  unity.  We  never  attain,  accordingly, 
to  the  realization  of  unity,  until  we  have  first  under- 
gone the  experience  of  variety.  Hence,  before  the 
race  realizes  its  unity,  the  unity  it  has  in  God,  it  is 
bound  to  realize  its  variety,  the  variety  it  has  in 
its  own  members. 

This  being  the  case,  our  first  social  forms,  the 
first  institutions  declarative  of  our  social  unity,  are 
of  necessity  very  narrow  and  imperfect,  being  based 
upon  a  narrow  induction  of  particulars,  upon  a  nar- 
row experience  of  variety.  The  distinction  of  the 
sexes  is  the  first  or  most  obvious   feature  of  this 


variety,  and  furnishes  accordingly  the  basis  of  our 

6* 


110  MORALITY    AND 

unitary  experience,  the  germ  of  our  unitary  con- 
sciousness. The  marriage  institution,  declaring  the 
union  of  one  man  with  one  woman,  is  the  earliest 
social  form  or  institution  known  to  the  race,  and 
the  rudiment  of  all  the  others.  One  man  and  one 
woman  experience  a  passional  sympathy  with  each 
other,  which  leads  them  into  a  complete  union, 
leaving  all  other  men  and  women  out  from  it.  The 
offspring  of  this  union  furnishes  the  material  of  the 
family  institution,  an  institution  which  expresses  the 
union  of  the  children  of  one  married  pair,  and  ex- 
cludes from  it  the  children  of  every  other  pair. 
These  children  in  their  turn  each  beget  families,  and 
the  union  of  these  families  again  gives  rise  to  the 
tribal  institution,  the  tribe  being  the  union  of  all  the 
famiUes  descending  from  one  original  family.  The 
tribal  union  again  generates  the  town,  or  union  of 
many  tribes;  and  the  town,  in  its  turn,  generates 
the  nation^  or  the  union  of  many  towns.  Thus  all 
these  institutions  beginning  with  marriage,  or  the 
union  of  one  man  and  one  woman,  and  ending  with 
the  nation,  or  the  union  of  many  towns,  are  merely 
so  many  enlarging  expressions  of  human  unity,  de- 
veloped by  our  experience  of  variety.  They  are 
so  many  types  or  symbols  of  that  internal  and  in- 
tegral unity  which  men  have  in  their  Creator ;  and 


THE  PERFECT  LIFE.  Ill 

they  take  place  or  result  each  in  its  turn  from  an 
increasing  experience  on  the  part  of  the  race  of  the 
infinite  variety  which  characterizes  its  members. 

Now  you  perceive  from  this  rapid  sketch  that 
these  various  social  forms  or  institutions  serve  but 
to  finite  man,  serve  but  to  limit  and  straiten  his  in- 
finite personality.  While  each  of  them,  compared 
with  its  predecessor,  is  an  enlarged  type  of  human 
unity,  they  are  yet  all,  when  compared  with  that 
unity  itself,  most  finite  and  inadequate.  Thus, 
though  the  family  institution  expresses  a  larger 
unity  than  the  marriage  institution,  being  the  union 
of  many  brothers  and  sisters  instead  of  one  man 
and  one  woman  only,  yet  it  is  itself  finite  as  limited 
to  the  issue  of  one  pair.  So  the  tribal  union,  though 
it  is  a  larger  type  of  unity  than  the  family  institu- 
tion, being  the  union  o?  many  famihes,  is  yet  finite 
as  excluding  all  other  tribes.  And  so  forth  till  we 
get  to  the  nation,  which,  while  it  is  a  more  advanced 
type  of  unity  than  that  afforded  by  the  town  or  mu- 
nicipal institution,  is  yet  itself  finite  as  excluding  all 
other  nations.  Thus  all  the  social  institutions  which 
have  yet  arisen  in  the  world,  and  which  constitute 
the  existing  form  or  body  of  society,  are,  when 
compared  with  the  great  spiritual  fact  itself,  finite 
or  insufficient.     They  none  of  them  e'xpress  man's 


112  MORALITY    AND 

infinite  or  perfect  unity  with  his  fellow.  They  ex- 
press the  partial,  not  the  universal  unity  of  the  race. 
Thus,  at  best,  they  express  the  unity  of  the  English- 
man with  the  English-man  and  Scotch-man  or  Irish- 
man ;  but  in  so  doing  assert  his  disunion  with  the 
French-man  and  Spanish-man,  and  so  far  prove 
only  a  partial  image  of  the  truth  as  it  is  in  God. 

And  as  these  institutions  are  thus  finite  or  im- 
perfect, so  they  engender  in  their  subject  a  very 
finite  or  imperfect  consciousness.  They  impress 
him  with  an  extreme  narrowness,  a  most  incomplete 
individuality,  an  individuality  which  is  not  charged 
with  the  positive  virtue  of  God,  but  is  a  mere  sickly 
reflection  of  these  domineering  social  relations. 
They  teach  him  that  the  great  end  of  his  existence 
is  to  become  a  good  husband,  a  good  brother,  a 
good  neighbor  and  a  good  citizen.  Consequently 
they  propose  a  continually  finite  righteousness  to 
him,  and  fill  him  with  conceit  in  ths  exact  ratio  of 
his  attainments. 

But  man  being  above  all  things  the  creature  of 
God,  feels  the  inward  intimation  and  prophecy  of  a 
larger  unity  with  his  fellow  than  these  institutions 
affirm  or  allow,  even  r  perfect  unity,  which  these 
institutions  deny.  The  consequence  is  a  conflict 
between  man    and   existing   institutions,  between 


THE  PERFECT  LIFE.  113 

humanity  and  society.  Thus  the  marriage-subject, 
finding  himself  in  spiritual  relation  or  relations  of 
affection  with  some  other  person  than  his  legal 
partner,  is  led  to  violate  the  marriage  obhgation. 
So  the  family-subject,  finding  himself  in  closer 
spiritual  accord,  in  relations  of  superior  friendship 
with  other  families  than  his  own,  is  led  practically 
to  disesteem  and  transcend  that  tie.  So,  also,  the 
citizen,  coming  into  relations  of  greater  amity  and 
sympathy  with  other  nations  than  his  own,  learns 
to  renounce  his  national  allegiance.  Tn  all  these 
cases  you  perceive  that  the  evil  arises  not  from  the 
spirit  of  humanity,  but  from  the  imperfection  of  the 
institutions  which  profess  to  embody  that  spirit. 
Man  is  spiritually  larger  than  the  institutions  which 
pretend  to  contain  him.  He  consequently  over- 
flows their  boundaries  and  exposes  them  to  con- 
tempt. 

This  is  the  true  philosophy  of  crime.  It  arises 
from  an  antagonism  between  the  spirit  of  humanit}^, 
or  what  is  the  same  thing  the  divine  spirit  in  man, 
and  existing  social  institutions.  Take  away  this 
antagonism  and  you  immediately  exhaust  crime. 
Let  society  become  perfectly  expressive  of  humani- 
ty, let  its  institutions  reflect  the  unity  of  the  race, 
and   instantly  universal  love  would  abound,  and 


114  MORALITY    ANB 

what  is  better^  a  love  which  would  be  without  re- 
flective consciousness,  without  self-complacency, 
without  a  sense  of  merit. 

The  divine  spirit  in  every  man  incessantly  urges 
his  unity  with  nature  and  his  fellow  man,  his  unity 
with  the  universe.  Thus,  if  you  regard  the  child 
before  he  becomes  morally  sophisticate,  or  disci- 
plined by  society,  you  perceive  that  he  views  all 
things  and  all  persons  as  made  for  his  delight,  and 
puts  forth  his  hand  with  a  lordly  disdain  of  every 
laborious  distinction  o^  meum  and  tmim.  Now  the 
child  is  but  the  prophecy  of  the  man.  His  ignorant 
innocence  only  typifies  that  wiser  innocence  which 
shall  endow  and  render  beautiful  the  ripe  divine 
manhood.  Hence  the  Christ  affirmed  that  we 
should  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven  only  by  becom- 
ing as  little  children,  that  is,  by  putting  away  those 
vain  subtikies  of  philosoph}^  which  base  our  present 
diseased  manhood,  and  subjecting  ourselves  with 
the  candor  of  children  to  the  infallible  laws  of 
God. 

But,  however  this  may  be,  it  is  evident  to  you 
from  the  past  rapid  sketch,  that  society  has  thus  far 
done  nothing  for  the  individual  but  to  deepen  or 
intensify  his  moral  consciousness,  that  is,  to  bring 
him  under  law  successivelv  to  his  wife,  his  children, 


THE  PERFECT  LIFE.  115 

his  relatives,  his  neighbors,  his  fellow  countrymen. 
The  most  it  has  done  for  him  is  to  allow  him  a  re- 
lative goodness,  a  goodness  lying  in  his  relations  to 
other  people.  But  clearly,  man  should  be  good  by 
virtue  of  his  creation,  or  his  relation  to  the  infinite 
God,  should  be  good  in  himself,  infinitely  good.  It 
is  impossible  either  that  God's  creature  should  be 
evil  in  himself,  or  derive  goodness  from  any  other 
source  than  his  creator.  The  former  position  ob- 
viously stultifies  itself.  And  to  suppose  the  crea- 
ture's goodness  flowing  from  any  other  source  than 
the  creator,  as  from  his  relation  to  other  creatures, 
is  to  make  the  original  goodness,  of  which  it  is  only 
an  image,  also  flow  not  from  God  Himself,  but 
from  His  relations  to  other  beings.  It  is,  in  short, 
to  make  God's  goodness  contingent  instead  of  posi- 
tive. 

Hence  society  has  failed  hitherto  perfectly  to 
subserve  the  interests  of  human  individualit3^  It 
has  given  the  individual  expansion,  but  only  in  a 
downward  or  subversive  direction,  such  an  expan- 
sion as  you  give  the  prisoner,  not  by  breaking  his 
chains  and  bidding  him  be  free,  but  by  enlarging 
and  multiplying  the  wards  of  his  prison.  Conse- 
quently you  perceive  what  you  have  every  a  priori 
warrant  to  anticipate,  that  individual  history  has  pre- 


116  MORALITY    AND 

sented  little  else  hitherto  than  a  warfare  between 
nature  and  society,  between  self-love  and  charity. 
Nature  and  society  having  themselves  no  individu- 
ality are  utterly  godless,  exhibit  no  faintest  suspi- 
cion of  man's  vital  source.  Accordingly  they  sug- 
gest to  him  only  an  outward  law  of  action,  only  an 
outward  principle  of  development :  the  former,  the 
law  of  self-love,  the  law  of  his  relation  to  his  own 
body;  the  latter  the  law  of  charity,  the  law  of  his 
relation  to  his  fellow-man.  Nature  bids  him  reahze 
his  infinitude,  his  perfection,  by  the  service  of  his 
own  body.  Society  bids  him  reahze  it  by  the  ser- 
vice of  his  fellow-man.  Thus  neither  nature  nor 
society  conceives  it  to  be  already  provided  and  se- 
cure in  God,  and  only  waiting  the  cessation  of  their 
strife  to  flow  into  his  consciousness  ;  but  regards  it 
on  the  other  hand  as  a  thing  to  be  assiduously 
coaxed  out  of  their  own  costive  and  innutritions 
udders. 

The  individual  thus  discipHned  consequently, 
and  feeling  in  every  pulse  of  his  soul  the  instinct 
of  sovereignty,  proceeds  to  realize  it  by  these  na- 
tural and  moral  methods.  If  he  be  of  an  external 
or  sensuous  genius,  he  pursues  the  former  method, 
the  method  of  pleasure,  obeying  the  law  of  self- 
love.     If  he  be  of  an  inward  and  reflectiv^e  temper, 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  117 

he  pursues  the  latter  method,  the  method  of  duty, 
obeying  the  law  of  brotherly  love.  But  the  more 
diligently  he  prosecutes  either  pursuit,  that  of  plea- 
sure or  this  of  duty,  the  further  he  strays  from  his 
great  quest  and  accumulates  defeat.  For  his 
freedom  is  not  his  own  laborious  achievment,  it  is 
the  cordial  gift  of  God.  It  does  not  come  to  him  in 
any  outward  way,  from  any  service  however  zeal- 
ous either  of  necessity  or  duty.  It  comes  to  him  in 
a  purely  inward  and  supersensuous  way  as  a  per- 
petual influx  from  God  into  his  soul.  While  he 
seeks  therefore  to  wring  it  out  of  the  base  reluctant 
bowels  of  nature  and  society,  while  he  seeks,  in 
short,  anything  with  them  but  to  compel  them  into 
the  speediest  and  fullest  possible  imagery  or  reflec- 
tion of  it,  it  perpetually  baffles  his  grasp,  and  beats 
him  to  the  dust  in  shame  and  despair. 

For  suppose  him  to  succeed  never  so  well  in  ei-       |  ^ 
ther  of  these  paths.     Suppose  him,  for  example,  to     /L:t, 
accumulate  never  so  much  of  the  bounties  of  nature. 
Then  just  in  proportion  to  that  accumulation  will         ^ 
be  his  care,  his  anxiety,  his  painful  servitude.     In- 
stead of  realizing  his  freedom  he  loses  it.     He  has 
less  of  it  now  than  he  had  when  he  stood  naked 
under  God's  sky,  with   nought  to  shield  him  from      ; 
the  giant  sport  of  nature.     For  what  he  has  gained 


118  MORALITY    AND 

will  only  stay  gained  on  condition  of  his  continually 
adding  to  it.  Every  day  consumes  it,  and  every 
day  therefore  puts  forth  new  claims  upon  his  relent- 
less toil.  Thus  having  once  entered  upon  this  ser- 
vice, he  finds  no  release  till  he  has  conquered  all 
nature,  made  all  her  resources  his  own  ;  and  this 
nature  herself  denies  him  force  to  do. 

Or  suppose  him  to  gain  never  so  much  of  the  es- 
teem of  his  fellow-man,  and  to  abound  in  all  manner 
of  moral  excellence.  Now  just  in  proportion  to  his 
abundance  in  this  direction  also,  will  be  his  care, 
his  anxiety,  his  painful  servitude.  For  moral  good- 
ness does  not  stay  of  its  own  momentum.  It  stays 
'/^  only  upon  the  condition  of  continual  augmentation. 
^'If  I  say  *'  I  denied  myself  and  was  good  yester- 
day ;  to-day  therefore  I  will  take  my  ease  and  en- 
joy myself;"  that  yesterday's  goodness  instantly 
perishes,  and  I  am  obliged  to  begin  clean  anew. 
No,  the  more  earnestly  I  strive  to  achieve  moral 
goodness,  to  fulfil  the  law  of  brotherly  love,  the  more 
I  find  incessantly  to  do,  the  less  hope  of  release  have 
I  in  time  or  eternity.  For  this  law  is  spiritual,  de- 
manding in  the  votary  a  mind  of  perfect  equality 
with  every  other  man,  and  therefore  mortally  in- 
imical to  the  aspirations  of  individual  ambition. 
The  only  man  who  fulfils  it,  the  only  man  who,  in 


THE    PERFECT  LIFE.  119 

fact,  fulfils  either  law,  the  law  of  self-love  or 
of  neighborly  love,  the  law  of  nature  or  of  so- 
ciety, is  the  divine  or  perfect  man,  the  man  who 
asks  nothing  either  of  nature  or  of  his  fellow-man, 
because  He  already  has  all  things  in  God,  and  whom 
therefore  both  nature  and  society  hasten  to  glorify 
and  adore. 

Now  this  experience  on  the  part  of  man  of  the 
utter  vanity  of  his  pursuits,  of  the  utter  inability 
both  of  nature  and  society  to  satisfy  his  aspiration 
and  give  him  peace  with  himself,  although  bitterly 
painful  in  its  transit,  has  yet  the  most  indispensable 
uses  in  convincing  him  of  his  essential  infinitude, 
and  leading  him  to  disown  and  reject  the  finite  self- 
hood. If  it  were  not  for  the  perpetual  disappoint- 
ment he  encounters  in  the  pursuit  both  of  pleasure 
and  righteousness,  he  would  sink  into  the  abject 
tool  or  votary  of  nature  and  his  fellow-man,  and  the 
immortal  instinct  he  derives  from  God  would  expire 
consequently  with  the  decay  of  nature  and  the  dis- 
ruption of  his  social  ties.  But  these  disappoint- 
ments nurse  his  infinitude,  conserve  his  immortahty. 
They  guard  the  interests  of  his  unconscious  destiny, 
giving  it  an  invincible  development  and  relief.  Re- 
fusing utterly  to  satisfy  his  instinct  of  sovereignty, 
ministering  his  most  impassioned  solicitations  only 
the  ashes  of  disease  and  death,  they  throw  him  in- 


120 


MORALITY    AND 


cessantly  and  perforce  upon  his  inward  self,  and 
teach  him  to  ask  life  where  alone  it  may  be  found 
without  money  and  without  price,  in  the  divine  and 
unfathomable  depths  of  his  own  spontaneous  na- 
ture. 

For  here  is  the  birth  of  Art,  or  the  true  divine 
life  in  man.  Art  is  nothing  else  than  the  obedience 
of  one's  spontaneous  tastes  or  attractions,  uncon- 
trolled either  by  nature  or  society,  by  necessity 
or  duty.  And  this  obedience  would  be  forever  im- 
possible .to  man,  if  nature  or  society  gave  him 
repose,  if  they  met  and  appeased  the  cry  of  his  soul 
for  freedom.  If  nature  perfectly  satisfied  me,  if  so- 
ciety perfectly  justified  me  ;  if  my  relations  to  the 
one  brought  me  no  consciousness  of  disease,  and  my 
relations  to  the  other  no  consciousness  of  sin  ;  then 
I  should  be  forever  content  to  feed  upon  honey,  and 
bask  in  the  smile  of  my  fellows,  ignoring  God,  ignor- 
ing destiny.  But  as  neither  satisfies  or  justifies  me, 
as  my  addiction  to- nature  or  self-love  convinces  me 
only  of  disease  and  death,  and  my  addiction  to  so- 
ciety or  duty  convinces  me  only  of  sin;  so  I  am  in- 
cessantly driven  inwards  upon  myself,  upon  my 
own  spontaneous  tendencies  and  attractions,  which 
are  the  throne  of  God's  power  and  majesty,  to  rea- 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  121 

lize  an  infinite  righteousness,  or  a  selfhood  at  per- 
fect harmony  with  man  and  nature. 

I  have  now  shewn  you  what  I  engaged  to  shew 
you,  namely,  how  the  realization  of  man's  destiny 
or  perfection  involved  not  only  his  experience  of  a 
finite  selfhood,  but  also  his  gradual  renunciation  of 
it — his  complete  elimination  of  it  or  putting  it  out  of 
doors,  there  to  stand  and  wait  upon  his  infinite  one. 
Doubtless  many  questions  occur  to  you  hereupon, 
which  I  have  not  now  the  space  andtimeto  answer. 
Let  us  postpone  these  to  future  occasions,  when  the 
same  impediments  will  not  exist,  and  proceed  now 
to  the  confirmation  and  illustration  of  what  has  been 
already  said. 

It  is  clearly  deducible  then' from  all  I  have  said, 
that  I  hold  morality  to  be  a  transient  phenomenon 
of  humanity,  or  to  pertain  only  to  man's  immature 
experience,  having  not  only  no  relevancy  to  him  as 
the  creature  of  God,  but  imposing  a  positive  disabil- 
ity upon  that  relation.  I  beg  that  no  one  will  be 
silly  enough  to  charge  me  hereupon  with  maintain- 
ing that  our  consciousness  of  unity  with  God  will 
involve  a  continued  consciousness  of  hostile  rela- 
tions with  nature  or  man.  On  the  contrary,  I  hold 
the  activity  of  the  latter  consciousness  to  be  altoge- 
ther contingent  upon  the  dormancy  of  the    former 


122  MORALITY   AND 

one,  and  that  nothing  accordingly  is  needed  for  the 
utter  abolition  of  our  present  vicious  relations  with 
nature,  and  criminal  relations  with  man,  than  the 
recognition  of  our  unity  with  God.  It  is  exclusively 
our  infidelity  towards  God  which  leaves  us  under 
the  tyranny  of  nature  and  society,  and  we  have  only 
to  acknowledge  the  truth  as  to  the  former  and  high- 
er relation,  to  find  this  tyranny  perfectly  innocu- 
ous, to  find  it  in  fact  transformed  into  a  complete 
and  measureless  benediction. 

I  know  very  well  the  prestige  which  surrounds 
existing  institutions.  I  know  the  tremendous  grasp 
which  the  existing  form  of  society  has  upon  our  ima- 
gination and  I  should  be  utterly  hopeless  of  every 
attempt  to  weaken  it,  did  I  not  feel  assured  that  the 
whole  force  of  divine  Providence,  the  total  move- 
ment of  human  destiny,  co-operated  with  such  at- 
tempts. Its  institutions  are  effete.  The  vigorous 
life  which  once  gave  them  repute  has  departed. 
They  no  longer  bless  the  subject.  To  be  a  good 
husband,  a  good  brother,  a  good  neighbor,  a  good 
citizen,  is  no  longer  a  guarantee  against  starvation. 
For  one  that  society  feeds  and  clothes  it  sends  ten 
thousand  naked  and  empty  away.  For  one  it  fills 
with  the  vapid  froth  of  self-conceit,  it  fills  ten  thou- 
sand with  an  unappeasible  consciousness  of  want 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  123 

and  sin.  To  save  appearances  it  hastens  indeed  to 
trip  up  the  heels  of  the  burglar,  and  immure  the 
petty  thief  in  prison.  But  it  organizes  the  systema- 
tic pillage  of  the  stock  exchange,  and  builds  up 
the  fortune  of  its  rich  men  upon  the  actual  murder 
of  its  poor.  It  proclaims  from  all  its  pulpits  the 
undiminished  terrors  of  the  devil,  and  the  lake  of 
fire  and  brimstone,  but  with  what  effect?  He  to 
whom  the  tidings  might  be  profitable,  the  selfish 
man,  laughs  with  incredulity;  and  only  they  to 
whom  they  are  wholly  irrelevant,  the  tender-heart- 
ed woman  and  the  man  of  gentle  affections,  drag 
out  a  life  of  miserable  uncertainty,  or  else  renounce 
ifc-ift  violont  dcBpatr.     Will  God  endure  this?  *f~"ft.c^jC. 

Society  w^as  made  for  man,  not  man  for  society. 
It  is  the  steward  of  God  not  His  heir,  and  He  holds 
it  therefore  to  a  rigid  accountability.  If  it  regards 
the  interests  of  the  heir  in  the  first  place  according- 
ly, and  its  own  interests  in  the  second  place,  then 
He  will  bestow  upon  it  abundant  honor  ;  it  shall  re- 
flect in  fact  all  the  glory  of  the  heir.  But  if  it  forget 
its  intrinsic  subordination  or  stewardship,  and  claim 
to  be  itself  the  heir,  He  will  deprive  it  even  of  this 
reflected  glory,  and  deliver  it  over  to  contempt  and 
death. 

But  this  has  been  the  capital  mistake  of  society 


124  MORALITY    AND 

from  the  beginning.  The  heir  has  so  long  delayed 
his  coming,  that  the  steward  has  grown  bold  and 
come  to  look  upon  himself  as  the  heir.  So  obdu- 
rate has  this  conviction  waxed,  that  it  apparendy 
requires  every  arrow  in  God's  quiver  to  arouse 
him  from  his  delusion.  Nothing  else  explains  the 
present  stupidity  of  society  under  the  desolating 
judgments  which  are  visiting  it.  It  seems  to  have 
utterly  abjured  that  purely  secondary  or  ministerial 
place  to  man  which  it  occupies  in  the  divine  regard. 
It  believes  itself  valued  by  God  for  its  own  sake, 
and  not  for  its  worth  to  the  individual  soul,  that 
soul  whose  existence  in  nature  would  be  impossible 
without  it.  It  esteems  itself  a  true  divine  end,  and 
not  merely  a  means  to  that  end,  and  thus  perpetu- 
ally antagonizes  the  Divine  Humanity,  the  spirit 
of  God  in  man,  exerting  an  implacable  tyranny 
over  the  individual  life. 

But  man  cannot  succumb  to  this  tyranny.  He 
may  not  be  able  to  justify  his  resistance  intellectual- 
ly, he  may  not  be  able  to  cast  back  the  reproach  of 
society  into  its  own  teeth,  but  he  will  not  suffer  it 
to  compress  his  passions  with  impunity.  They 
will  burst  forth  upon  occasion  with  destructive 
energy — an  energy  ivhose  destructiveness  however  re- 
fers itself  purely  to  that  foregone  compression — and  as- 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  125 

sert  their  divine  and  imperishable  freedom,  if  not 
in  a  positive  or  orderly  way,  still  in  a  manner  to 
show  the  perfect  impotence  of  society  to  subdue 
them. 

Talk  as  you  will,  society  remains  stupidly  deaf. 
Taking  her  stand  upon  her  existing  institutions, 
she  deals  out  her  vindictive  anathema  upon  every 
one  who  practically  refuses  to  be  contained  in  them. 
She  never  suspects  that  the  cause  of  the  disobedi- 
ence she  encounters  lies  in  these  very  institutions 
themselves,  in  their  finiteness,  in  their  refusal  to  ex- 
pand with  the  expansion  of  God's  life  in  man.  Be- 
cause they  have  been  good  in  the  past,  because 
each  in  its  turn  was  a  larger  t3^pe  of  human  unity 
than  its  predecessor,  society  regards  them  also  as 
final,  or  as  constituting  the  substance  of  that  unity. 
It  is  as  though  this  temporary  body  of  mine  should 
assume  to  live  after  the  spirit  had  departed  from 
it,  should  presume  upon  my  spirit's  eternity  be- 
cause of  its  use  to  that  spirit  in  time.  Doubtless 
my  bod3^  has  been  helpful  to  my  spirit,  but  there 
comes  a  period  to  this  relation,  a  period  when  the 
body  has  attained  its  climax  of  experience,  and  no 
longer  promotes  but  actually  hinders  the  _growth  of 
my  spirit.  For  the  service  it  has  rendered  me  I  no 
doubt  owe  it  decent  burial.     But  whether  decent  or 

7 


126  MORALITY    AND 

indecent,  burial  is  its  infallible  doom,  burial  out  of 
human  sight,  and  resolution  into  elemental  nature. 

Exactly  such  is  the  fate  of  all  our  social  institu- 
tions. None  of  them  is  adequate  fully  to  express 
man's  spiritual  unity,  since  the  only  adequate  ex- 
pression of  that  is  the  organization  of  the  whole 
race  in  perfect  fellowship,  an  organization  not  by 
human  legislation,  not  by  police,  not  by  con- 
vention, but  by  God's  legislation  which  is 
SCIENCE,  and  primarily  by  that  method  of  science 
which  has  been  termed  the  law  of  the  series^  and  ap- 
plied to  the  human  passions.  Our  present  institu- 
tions, at  least  all  those  which  vitalize  our  morality 
blink  this  inward  or  spiritual  unity  of  the  race. 
They  proceed  upon  a  certain  outward  and  natural 
unity,  as  that  of  persons  born  under  one  roof,  or  in 
one  vicinage,  or  in  one  country.  But  they  have  no 
eye  for  that  spiritual  unity  which  disdains  the  limi- 
tations of  space  and  time,  and  gives  the  whole  race 
the  continuity  of  a  man,  the  integrity  of  God.  Ac- 
cordingly, as  this  spiritual  unity  asserts  itself  more 
and  more  in  human  consciousness,  it  more  and  more 
disowns  the  old  institutions,  and  craves  forms  pro- 
portionate to  itself 

Thus  you  perceive  that  the  march  of  the  divine 
Providence  in  the  earth  incessantly  demands  the 
enlargement  of  existing  institutions,  their  enlarge- 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  127 

ment  or  their  overthrow.  If  the  estabHshed  forms 
obstinately  resist  the  new  life,  if  they  will  not  ex- 
pand with  the  expansion  of  the  individual  genius, 
it  is  manifest  that  they  have  survived  their  use,  and 
only  encumber  the  earth.  I  do  not  say  that  the  di- 
vine life  finds  its  normal  or  positive  manifestation  in 
methods  of  violence,  for  that  life  is  essential  peace 
and  all  its  paths  are  those  of  pleasantness.  But 
when  society  puts  itself  in  antagonism  with  man, 
when  it  gathers  itself  up  in  its  present  embankments 
and  refuses  to  enlarge  itself  to  the  dimensions  of 
universal  humanity,  then  the  divine  Providence 
must  needs  ally  itself  with  those  whom  society  thus 
drives  to  violence  and  turbulence.  What  God  is 
bound  to  hate,  what  He  is  bound  by  His  every  per- 
fection to  disallow,  is  the  attempt  of  society  to  or- 
ganize permanent  division  among  His  children,  those 
children  whom  He  unites.  Hence  His  earhest 
manifestations  in  nature  must  of  necessity  bear  a 
hostile  aspect  towards  society,  or  towards  every 
institution  which  gives  one  class  of  men  a  perma- 
nent superiority  over  others. 

From  this  exposition  you  will  have  no  diflSculty 
in  perceiving  why  God's  first  revelation  of  Himself 
in  humanity  takes  place  under  circumstances  of 
humiliation,  or  provokes  the  contempt  of  the  devout 


128  MORALITY  AND 

and  polite  world,  of  all  the  friends  of  the  existing 
order.  It  is  because  it  is  necessarily  hostile  to  that 
order,  because  God  cannot  affirm  the  insane  pre- 
tension of  society  to  the  supremacy  over  man,  but 
on  the  contrary  would  have  it  totally  subordinate 
to  him.  If  the  divine  man,  the  man  of  genius,  the  man 
of  inward  force,  the  man  of  ideas,  in  short  the  x\rtist, 
would  succumb  to  society  ;  if  he  would  say  nothing 
and  do  nothing  which  society  disallowed,  nothing 
subversive  of  its  customs  and  traditions;  if  he  would 
utter  no  prophecies  and  confess  no  want  of  a  superior 
righteousness  to  that  which  flowed  from  the  obedi- 
ence of  existing  institutions  ;  then  society  would 
gladly  honor  him,  and  give  him  the  pomp  and  glory 
of  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world. 

But  the  Artist  is  unable  to  gratify  society  in  this 
thing.  He  lives  from  God  alone,  from  the  inspira- 
tions of  truth  and  beauty  in  his  own  soul,  and  he 
cannot  acknowledge  any  law  or  institution  which 
limits  these.  Hence  in  an  immature  or  dissentient 
society  his  lot  is  to  suffer  outwardly,  to  be  crucified 
in  the  flesh  even  while  he  is  being  glorified  in  the 
spirit,  even  in  order  to  his  being  thus  glorified.  Ac- 
cordingly, if  you  will  search  history  through,  you 
will  find  the  divine  life  asserting  itself  in  man  al- 
ways under  social  obstruction  and   contempt.     No 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  129 

man  of  ideas  ever  announced  himself  without  arous- 
ing the  fanatic  jealousy  of  society,  without  its  chief 
priests  and  rulers  predicting  disaster,  and  stirring 
up  the  populace  to  his  destruction.  But  the  divine 
life  is  never  quenched.  The  very  dungeon  to 
which  it  is  shut  up  becomes  a  radiant  centre  of 
energy  to  it,  and  the  gallows  only  a  more  conspicu- 
ous witness  of  its  immortality. 

Butyou  need  not  career  over  the  whole  of  history 
to  learn  these  things.  You  are  Christians  from  your 
youth  up,  instructed  in  the  literal  doctrine  of  the 
Christ  from  your  mothers'  breasts,  and  I  am  only 
setting  before  you  the  spirit  of  that  doctrine  as  it 
glows  and  burns  in  the  sacred  letter.  You  know 
that  it  was  just  this  conflict  which  was  enacted  be- 
tween the  Jew  and  the  Christ.  Perhaps  your  teach- 
ers have  failed  to  tell  you  that  the  Christ  had 
never  any  quarrel  with  the  individual  as  absolved 
from  social  unit}^  but  only  with  society,  only  with 
the  rulers  of  the  nation  in  church  and  state.  The 
individual  who  stood  absolved  from  social  unity, 
who  was  cast  out  for  his  un worthiness,  had  no  word 
of  condemnation  from  those  guileless  lips :  publi- 
cans and  sinners  believed  his  quarrel  just,  and  the 
common  people,  we  are  told,  heard   him    gladly. 

But  the  un-common  people,  they  who  w€re  iden- 


130  MORALITY  AND 

tified  with  the  national  honor,  the  scribe  and  Phari- 
see, and  high  priest  and  elder  of  the  people,  the 
person,  in  short,  who  prized  his  Judaism  above  his 
humanity,  he  it  was  with  whom  Christ's  quarrel  lay. 
The  Jew  took  his  stand  upon  the  national  righteous- 
ness, upon  the  ground  of  his  national  difference 
from  other  men,  exhibited  in  his  exemplary  fulfil- 
ment of  all  the  duties  of  his  law,  and  on  this  ground 
challenged  the  divine  acceptance  and  favor.  You 
know  that  the  Christ  systematically  gainsaid  this 
pretension,  that  he  refused  to  admit  the  slightest  su- 
periority in  the  Jew  over  the  Gentile,  the  saint  over 
the  sinner,  that  he  consequently  incurred  the  tem- 
pestuous scorn  and  enmity  of  the  nation,  but  that 
he  never  ceased  to  denounce  them  as  hypocrites 
and  liars,  children  of  the  devil,  whose  damnation 
was  irresistible  and  everlasting.  You  know  that 
he  proclaimed  himself  the  friend  of  publicans  and 
sinners,  the  herald  of  God  not  to  the  righteous  but 
to  sinners,  the  physician  of  the  sick  not  of  the  well. 
You  know  that  he  denied  the  divine  kingdom  to  be 
of  this  world,  or  to  be  modelled  upon  the  fashion  of 
any  existing  societ}'',  a  kingdom  that  is  in  which 
one  should  be  exalted  and  another  despised,  one 
rich  and  another  poor,  one  powerful  another  weak. 
In  short  you  know  that  he  represented  the  righteous- 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  131 

ness  of  that  kingdom  as  entirely  superior  to  that 
of  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  being  a  righteousness 
which  should  invest  all  its  subjects  equally,  and 
obliterate  every  conventional  difference  of  good  and 
evil,  by  satisfying  every  soul  with  fatness. 

Now,  my  friends,  these  things  have  happened  for 
our  instruction,  upon  whom  the  ends  of  the  world 
have  truly  come.  Is  any  one  here  silly  enough  to 
believe  that  the  Jew  is  one  outwardly,  or  that  the 
true  Judaea  with  which  the  Christ  contends,  be- 
longs to  a  peculiar  geographical  latitude,  and  not  to 
human  nature  ?  If  so,  my  friend,  you  have  man- 
aged to  preserve  a  very  placid  bosom  in  the  midst 
of  great  disquiets.  You  have  managed,  in  fact,  to 
stagnate  in  the  very  heart  of  universal  movement. 
But  this  is  a  rare  case.  To  most  men  Judaea  is  a 
bosom  experience.  For  my  own  part,  I  very  much 
fear  that  I  might  not  be  able  on  the  instant  to  define 
the  exact  geographical  Judaea  to  you,  yet  I  should 
have  no  suspicion  of  my  particular  exclusion  from 
God's  vital  drama.  But  Judaea,  which  is  ungeo- 
graphical,  Judasa  which  is  spiritual  and  represents 
ideas,  this  Judaea  we  all  carry  about  with  us  in  our 
souls,  and  daily  reproduce  in  all  the  features  of  its 
deathless  personality. 

I  admit  that  the  literal  Judaea  was  once  a  great 


r 


132  MOKALITV    AND 

fact.  I  admit  that  it  esteemed  itself  and  aspired  to 
be  as  no  nation  ever  aspired  to  be,  tlie  chosen  and 
appropriate  inheritance  of  God.  I  admit  that  it 
came  into  collision  with  the  literal  Christ,  or  repre- 
sentative Divine  Man,  and  that  it  was  bound  l)y 
every  consideration  of  a  puny  patriotism,  and  every 
interest  of  a  cruel  morality,  to  put  him  to  a  bloody 
death.  But  now  remember  that  after  death  there 
comes  a  resurrection.  We  may  sa}^  indeed,  that 
death  is  only  in  order  to  a  resurrection,  that  it  is 
merely  a  transition  point  between  lower  and  higher, 
between  less  life  and  more  life.  For  example,  you 
put  the  seed  in  the  ground  :  it  dies,  it  rots,  it  disap- 
pears, but  out  of  that  death,  that  corruption,  that 
disappearance  springs  a  plant,  a  flower  or  fruit  which 
shall  fill  the  earth  with  plenty,  with  beauty,  with  joy. 
Thus  the  literal  Christ  has  passed  away :  never 
again  shall  we  behold  him  after  the  flesh  or  finitely. 
The  literal  Judsea  has  also  tasted  death  :  never- 
more shall  its  altars  smoke,  nor  the  sound  of  tabor 
and  pipe  enliven  its  streets.  But  both  Judaea  and 
the  Christ  have  a  spiritual  resurrection  or  glorifica- 
tion: Judaea  in  the  ideas  and  institutions  of  our 
modern  civilization  ;  the  Christ  in  all  those  instincts 
of  freedom,  in  all  those  aspirations  after  peace,  after 
hai'mony,  after  joy,  after  the  unimpeded  exercise  of 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  133 

one's  faculties  of  action,  which  are  subtly  but  irre- 
sistibly laying  that  civilization  law. 

I  have  a  perfect  faith  that  Christianity  had  never 
such  vitality  on  earth  as  now,  that  all  those  great 
events  which  occurred   under  Herod    and  Pontius 
Pilate  were,  in  fact,  only  figurative  of  the  transcen- 
dent realities  in  which  we  now  live  and  act.     The 
controversy  of  the  Christ  with  the  Jew,  and  his  de- 
livery by  the  Jew  into  the  hands  of  the  Roman,  only 
symbolize  the  present  injustice  which  the  interests 
of  human  individuality  encounter  at  the  hands  of 
the  Church,  and  the  interested  sycophancy  of  the 
latter  towards  the  State,  or  secular  power.     One 
gets  tired  of  witnessing  the  barren  idolatry  of  Jesus, 
an  idolatry  which  consists  with  the  habitual  profa- 
nation of  every  truth  he  uttered  and  put  into  life ; 
tired  of  hearing  him  called  Lord  !  Lord  !  while  as 
yet  we  obey  every  influence  to  which  he  gave  his 
life  a  sacrifice.     For  my  own  part,  I  seek  to  know 
the  Christ  no  more  after  the  flesh,  no  more   in  his 
finite  and   perishable  form.     I  seek  to  know  him 
henceforth  only  in  his  second  or  infinite  and  univer- 
sal manifestation,   as  the  power  of  God  in  every  in- 
dividual soul.     The  sphere  of  God  is  the  soul  of  uni- 
versal humanity,  and  His  highest  revelation  is  in 
the  individual  life.     A  perfect  life,  a  life  that  is 

7* 


134  MORALITY    AND 

whose  every  act  and  word  are  true  to  the  sovereign 
soul  within,  will  ever  be  the  truest  revelation    of 
God,   as  it  is  the  highest  expression  of  Art. 

When  Jesus  Christ  amidst  the  dripping  scorn  of 
all  the  devout  minds  of  his  nation,  outspake  the 
measureless  kindness  with  which  his  heart  was 
aglow  towards  the  woman  taken  in  adultery:  when 
he  confronted  the  dignitaries  of  his  people,  those 
who  were  esteemed  by  all  his  friends  and  neigh- 
bors as  eminently  the  servants  of  God,  and  pro- 
nounced them  mere  actors  or  hypocrites,  children 
of  their  father  the  devil :  when  he  met  the  obtru- 
sive and  self-complacent  interference  of  his  mother 
by  the  stern  rebuke,  "  Woman,  what  have  I  to  do 
with  ilieeV  when  finally  feeling  in  his  deepest  soul 
the  shallowness  and  vanity  of  these  merely  natural 
ties,  he  said  to  those  who  told  him  that  his  mother 
and  brethren  stood  without  desiring  to  speak  with 
him,  that  "  he  had  no  mother  nor  brethren  but  such 
as  did  the  will  of  God  :"  he,  in  all  these  cases,  only 
typified  that  supreme  and  beautiful  life  which  is 
yet  to  reveal  itself  in  every  man.  He  indeed  ex- 
hibited the  divine  or  perfect  man  under  humiliation, 
under  the  obscuration  of  warring  circumstances. 
His  life  did  not  seem  beautiful,  because  the  common 
or  established  life  was  so  false  as  to  turn  his  into  an 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  135 

incessant  protest,  an  incessant  warfare.  But  it  was 
at  bottom  the  most  beautiful  and  sovereign  life  ever 
exhibited  on  earth.  He  alone,  of  all  the  race  of 
men,  has  dared  to  be  exactly  true  to  his  own  soul, 
or  God  within  him.  When  I  find  it  so  hard  for  my- 
self to  decline  an  invitation  to  some  paltry  tea-party, 
for  fear  of  offending  the  customs  of  society  ;  when  I 
feel  it  a  severe  trial  to  forego  the  empty  and  expen- 
sive mummery  of  mourning,  lest  some  infinitesimal 
moralist  be  shocked  *,  when  I  hide  my  hands  be- 
tween my  knees  at  the  opera  lest  Mrs.  Grundy 
should  discover  their  des.titution  of  an  orthodox  cov- 
ering ;  when  I  huddle  away  my  cards  on  a  Sunday 
evening  for  fear  of  the  neighboring  clergyman  com- 
ing in  and  finding  me  at  whist  with  my  children ; 
the  contrast  I  am  thus  made  aware  of  between  him 
and  me,  leaves  me  little  doubt  of  his  divinity. 

He  seems,  indeed,  the  only  man  in  history.  All 
other  men  seem  but  lackeys.  For  the  peculiarity 
of  Christ's  manhood,  the  very  divinity  of  his  manli- 
ness, was  this,  that  he  opposed  the  best  virtue  of 
his  time,  and  finally  fell  a  victim  to  it.  Unlike  the 
moralist  he  despised  the  cheap  fame  which  flows 
from  the  condemnation  of  vice  and  crime.  He  had 
least  of  all  men  any  relish  for  vice  or  crime  ;  but  he 
never  failed  on  any  occasion  to  justify  the  criminal. 


lLH/i4j4<C 


<io 


136  MORALITY    AND 

I  cannot  find  in  all  my  persevering  search  of  the 
gospels,  an  instance  in  which  the  Christ  was  found 
exalting  himself  above  the  blackest  sinner.  He 
seems  to  have  had  no  outward  sanctity  of  any  sort. 
He  ate  and  drank  so  like  the  common  herd,  that  they 
whose  righteousness  very  largely  consisted  in  oddities 
of  diet  and  other  ritual  whimsicalities,  were  fain  to 
consider  him  gluttonous  and  a  wine-bibber.  I  find 
no  instance  in  all  his  history,  in  which  he  ever  did 
a  stroke  of  work  whereby  to  gain  a  living.  On  the 
contrary,  so  far  as  any  light  is  shed  upon  the  ques- 
tion, he  seems  to  have  preferred  living  by  the  free- 
will charity  of  his  followers,  some  elderly  women 
being  incidentally  designated  as  those  who  minister- 
ed to  him  of  their  substance.  Not  a  single  word 
is  reported  of  his  devout  observance  of  the  Sabbath, 
but  on  the  contrary  he  is  described  as  profaning  it 
to  the  popular  estimation  by  doing  things  upon  it 
which  were  commonly  thought  unlawful.  And 
finally  be  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  that  the  king- 
dom promised  in  so  many  words  to  his  people  by 
their  sacred  prophets,  a  kingdom  over  the  whole 
earth,  should  never  be  theirs,  thus  setting  himself  in 
direct  and  glaring  opposition  to  the  whole  obvious 
scope  of  their  scriptures. 

I  see  not,  for  my  own  part,  how  the   respectable 


THE    PERFECT     LIFE.  137 

and  orderly  classes  among  the  Jews  could  have 
acted  otherwise  than  they  did  with  Jesus.  I  see 
not,  indeed,  how  we  shall  be  able  to  justify  the 
Christ  historically  upon  any  of  the  current  maxims 
of  morality.  It  seems  to  me  that  if  he  were  to  re- 
appear in  our  day,  we  should  be  bound  to  regard 
him  as  menacing  the  peace  of  society.  For  though 
he  should  himself  infringe  no  statute  of  the  moral 
law,  yet  if,  whilst  avowedly  acting  in  the  name  of 
God,  he  should  say  to  the  criminal  whom  we  con- 
demn to  imprisonment  and  death,  '*  J  do  not  con- 
demn thee,  go  and  sin  no  more,"  we  should  feel  that 
he  was  gainsaying  the  deepest  principles  of  the 
prevailing  ethics,  and  tacitly  rebuking  our  most  hal- 
lowed institutions. 

I  am  indeed  well  aware  that  the  Christ  is  com- 
monly reputed  to  have  been  a  zealous  friend  of  the 
current  morality.  I  know  very  well  that  he  is  com- 
monly represented  to  have  come  not  for  the  purpose 
of  fulfilling  the  law  by  the  introduction  of  a  better 
righteousness  than  the  law  itself  conferred,  but  of 
re-enacting  it  in  an  intensely  aggravated  form. 
And  it  is  easy  to  see  how  this  fallacious  representa- 
tion has  come  about.  The  great  controversy  be- 
tween Jesus  and  the  Jew  was  as  to  the  true  divine 
man,  or  the  righteousness  which  stood  approved  in 


9  .    .  .p-f   ^  '^1^4  /^--^  "^ 


138  MORALITY    AND 

God's  sight.     The  Jew  contended  that  it  was  the 
man  who  was  blameless  in  all  the  national  righteous- 
ness, in  all  the  righteousness  required  by  the  law 
of  Moses.    Very  well,  replied  Jesus,  but  a  law  to  be 
fulfilled  truly  must  be  fulfilled  in  the  spirit  as  well 
as  the  letter.     Now  as  the  whole  spirit  of  Moses' 
law  is  love  to  God  and  love  to  the  neighbor,  if  you 
do  not  in  your  hearts  love  your  neighbors  as  your- 
selves, but  on  the  ground  of  your  superior  literal 
sanctity  assume  airs  over  them,  it  is  quite  manifest 
that  you  miss  the  whole  spirit  of  the  law  and  stand 
condemned  by  your  own  standard.     It  is  no   evi- 
dence, therefore,  he   argued,  of  a  divine  man  that 
he  zealously  obeys  the  literal  enactments  of  the  law. 
Every  thing  depends  upon  the  spirit  with  which 
this  obedience  is  rendered,  whether  with  a  spirit  of 
love  to  the  neighbor,  or  with  a  spirit  of  self-exalta- 
tion.    He  alone  truly  fulfils  the  law  who  regards 
it  not  as  a  task  imposed  by  an  outward   authorit}^ 
and  with  a  view  therefore  to  its  rewards,  but  with 
an  inward  delight  as  breathing  the  divinest  and 
most  universal  love.     It  justifies  no  man   but   him 
who  does  its  works  for  their  own  sake  alone,  and 
not  as  a  means  to  his  own  spiritual  distinction  above 
other  men  ;  who  does   them  not  because  he  may 
thus  commend  himself  to  the  divine  favor,  but  only 


THE  PERFECT  LIFE.  139 

because  of  their  intrinsic  consonance  with  his  own 
profoundest  life.  In  a  word,  he  who  truly  fulfils  the 
law,  must  do  it  from  life,  and  not  to  life  ;  must  do  it 
spontaneously,  and  not  from  a  mere  sense  of  obli- 
gation. 

Now,  the  obvious  force  of  these  sayings  of  Jesus 
is  to  rebuke  the  pride  of  morality,  to  abase  the  van- 
ity of  those  who  conceive  that  God  recognises  the 
paltry  differences  of  human  character  and  feels 
Himself  bound  therefore  to  accord  the  saint  a  supe- 
rior favor  to  the  sinner.  He  denies  that  the  law 
was  ever  intended  to  be  a  minister  of  righteousness. 
He  denies  that  it  had  the  least  power  to  confer 
righteousness.  He  affirms,  and  his  apostles  affirm 
more  fully  after  him,  that  the  law  had  no  other  pur- 
pose than  the  manifestation  of  evil  in  its  votary.  It 
was  given  to  its  subject  as  a  mirror,  wherein  be- 
holding himself  in  his  natural  and  social  imperfec- 
tions, he  might  be  stimulated  to  aspire  after  a  per- 
fect life.  The  Jew,  indeed,  abused  this  mirror. 
That  is  to  say  he  used  it  for  no  other  purpose  than 
to  inflame  his  vanity.  You  would  say  that  I  abused 
my  looking-glass,  if  I  appealed  to  it  every  morning 
not  for  the  purpose  of  discovering  and  removing  the 
disorders  of  my  person,  but  only  for  the  purpose  of 
proving  my  personal  superiority  to  other  men.    Just 


140  MORALITY    AND 

SO  did  the  Jew  abuse  the  looking-glass  of  the  law. 
Instead  of  appealing  to  it  to  know  wherein  he  fell 
short  of  the  divine  or  perfect  man,  that  thus  he 
might  go  on  unto  all  perfection,  he  appealed  to  it 
to  reveal  wherein  he  was  superior  to  other  men, 
namely,    the  publicans  and  sinners  around  him. 

Christ  admitted  that  the  Pharisee  greatly  excelled 
the  publicans  in  legal  obedience,  but,  at  the  same 
time  denied  that  this  was  the  appropriate  use  of  the 
law.  This  incidental  distinction  which  the  law 
made  between  the  Pharisee  and  the  publican,  or  the 
saint  and  the  sinner,  was  not  the  great  end  of  the 
law,  any  more  than  the  incidental  distinction  which 
the  looking-glass  makes  between  the  handsome  and 
the  ugly  face  is  the  great  design  of  the  looking- 
glass.  The  design  of  the  looking-glass  is  to  discover 
any  casual  deviations  from  the  dictates  of  a  correct 
taste  which  may  be  exhibited  in  our  outward  ap- 
pearance, and  thus  subserve  the  ends  of  perfect 
beauty;  and  any  man,  therefore,  who  seeks  it  not 
with  the  view  of  amendment  exclusively,  but  only 
with  the  view  of  fehcitating  himself  on  his  manifest 
superiority  to  this,  that,  and  the  other  individual, 
perverts  it  from  its  true  end  to  the  service  of  his  own 
paltry  vanity.  So  the  design  of  the  law  was  only 
to  discover  and  make  plain  the  numerous  infirmities 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  141 

and  defects  which  belong  to  the  natural  and  social 
man,  the  man  who  is  in  bondage  to  nature  and  so- 
ciety, and  thus  prepare  the  way  for  the  divine  or 
perfect  man,  the  man  who  should  perfectly  image 
God.  Whenever  the  Jew  therefore  sought  the  law, 
not  for  the  purpose  of  discovering  wherein  he  failed 
of  this  ideal  or  perfect  man,  and  thus  aspiring  more 
and  more  after  him,  but  only  for  the  purpose  of  as- 
certaining his  comparative  superiority  to  other  im- 
perfect men,  be  perverted  the  law  from  its  divine 
end,  and  made  it  the  minister  of  his  own  spiritual 
conceit. 

In  order  to  convince  the  Jew  of  his  error  in  thus 
perverting  the  law,  the  Christ  followed  precisely  the 
same  course  that  you  would  follow,  in  order  to  con- 
vince the  dandy  of  his  error  in  perverting  the  look- 
ing-glass. If  you  saw  him  returning  every  day 
from  the  looking-glass  with  an  increased  compla- 
cency in  his  own  beauty,  and  an  increased  contempt 
accordingly  for  other  men,  you  would  intensify  the 
power  of  the  glass,  you  would  give  it  a  magnifying 
power,  that  thenceforth  whenever  the  deluded 
mortal  looked  into  it,  he  might  discover  all  those  la- 
tent seams,  wrinkles  and  blemishes  which  lie  em- 
bedded in  every  skin,  and  so  cease  from  the  idolatry 
of  his  stupid  face.     Just  so  the   Christ  intensified 


142  MORALITY    AND 

the  power  of  the  law,  that  it  might  reveal  to  its  vo- 
tary all  those  latent  seams,  wrinkles  and  blemishes 
which  inwardly  defile  his  best  morality,  and  so 
shame  him  out  of  his  importunate  self-idolatry. 
From  the  depths  of  his  own  inmost  soul  he  evoked 
the  spiritual  force  or  meaning  of  the  law,  in  order 
that  he  who  had  hitherto  found  life  in  its  superficial 
letter,  might  find  in  its  deepest  spirit  an  utter  death 
to  all  his    conceited  hopes  and  pretensions. 

Now  our  theologians  have  utterly  mistaken  all 
these  sayings  of  Jesus.  Instead  of  representing 
this  conduct  of  his  as  designed  to  teach  the  follj"  of 
the  Jew  in  being  satisfied  with  a  merely  finite  or 
comparative  righteousness,  when  he  might  enjoy  an 
infinite  or  positive  one  by  unity  with  God  in  his 
own  soul,  they  represent  it  as  designed  to  organize 
another  law  of  incomparably  deadlier  force  than  the 
old  one,  and  to  put  all  men  on  its  vain  obedience, 
only  to  magnify  his  own  indispensable  importance  to 
them.  Such  jugglery  and  self-seeking  men  do  not 
hesitate  to  ascribe  to  the  purest  life  in  history  ! 

The  Jew  was,  at  least,  outwardly  righteous,  as 
the  Christ  allowed.  He  had  some,  though  an  im- 
perfect ground  of  hope  towards  God,  and  felt  there- 
fore something  of  a  filial  and  human  relation  to  Him. 
But  the  Christian  according  to  our  theologians  is 


THE   PERFECT  LIFE.  143 

destitute  of  all  hope  towards  God  both  inwardly  and 
outwardly.  Two  laws  are  given  him  to  obey,  an 
inward  and  an  outward  one,  and  he  cannot  possibly 
obey  either.  Consequently  he  must  look  to  another 
to  obey  it  for  him,  and  so  be  kept  at  an  infinite  and 
eternal  remove  from  the  great  source  of  his  life. 
Thus  this  divine  man  who  was  revealed  as  a  mes- 
senger of  great  joy  to  all  people,  even  those  who 
sit  in  the  region  and  shadow  of  death,  who  was  re- 
vealed as  the  mediator  of  a  universal  righteousness 
which  should  envelope  every  creature  of  God  in  its 
sheltering  embrace,  is  habitually  palmed  off  upon 
us  not  as  the  minister  or  mediator  of  this  righteous- 
ness, hut  as  its  substitute,  so  that  we  who  are  looking 
for  the  gift  he  promised  are  to  be  forever  satisfied 
with  the  mere  promise  itself.  If  we  go  into  our 
synagogues  on  Sunday,  or  take  up  any  of  the  innu- 
merable tracts  which  like  a  plague  of  lice  devour 
the  land,  we  shall  hear  the  Christ  held  forth  not  as 
the  pledge  and  first  fruits  of  a  righteousness  which 
shall  one  day  be  all  men's,  but  only  as  a  more  ter- 
rific Moses  imposing  duties  which  are  utterly  im- 
practicable to  every  truly  living  soul,  and  consign- 
ing young  men  and  maidens  to  irreversible  perdi- 
dition  for  the  ineffable  offence  of  frequenting  the 
ball-room  and  theatre ! 


144  MORALITY    AND 

But  we  must  all  allow  that  the  theatre  has  had 


very  divine  uses.  When  we  contemplate  the  in- 
fluence of  the  prevalent  sectarianism,  how  it  weighs 
like  a  night-mare  upon  the  soul  of  man,  treading 
its  sweetest  blossoms  in  the  dust,  and  turning  its 
most  poetic  impulses  into  a  reproach,  we  cannot 
help  blessing  the  great  Friend  of  man  for  the  anta- 
gonistic influence  of  the  theatre,  and  the  potent 
charm  it  yields  to  human  life  even  in  its  present 
rude  development. 

The  ecclesiastical  theory  of  Christianity  is  a  sheer 
imposition.  It  has  nothing  in  its  favor  but  the  purse 
and  the  sword,  those  two  weapons  by  which  so- 
ciety still  contrives  to  maintain  its  usurpation.  It 
wars  with  the  letter  of  scripture,  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Christ  himself,  with  the  developments  of  history 
and  the  universal  instincts  of  the  human  heart.  It 
would  not  have  a  friend  or  apologist  to-morrow,  if 
man  were  delivered  to-day  from  the  bondage  of  his 
fellow-man,  that  is  to  say,  if  society  instead  of  seek- 
ing to  crush  the  individual  beneath  itself,  vouch- 
safed to  him  that  plenitude  alike  of  natural  subsis- 
tence and  social  respect  which  the  bare  fact  of  his 
birth  in  nature  and  society  entitles  him  to. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  consideration  of  our  moral 
experience. 


THE    PERFECT  LIFE.  145 

We  have  seen  that  morality  marks  a  very  imper- 
fect development  of  the  individual  life.  The  indi- 
vidual life  in  order  to  its  perfection,  exacts  a  per- 
fect balance  of  the  natural  and  social  law,  the  law 
of  self-love  and  the  law  of  charity,  a  perfect  equili- 
brium in  other  words  between  man's  appetites  and 
his  affections  or  sympathies.  While  this  balance  or 
equilibrium  is  yet  unattained  the  individual  oscil- 
lates between  the  two  extremes,  now  obeying  this 
law,  now  obeying  that.  Morality  expresses  just 
this  fact  of  oscillation.  It  expresses  the  vibratory 
or  pendulous  condition  of  the  human  individuality, 
preparatory  to  its  true  and  immortal  poise  or  rest  in 
God.  Accordingly  when  the  individual  obeys  the 
social  law,  the  law  of  charity,  to  the  denial  of  the 
natural  law  or  the  law  of  self-love,  we  pronounce 
his  morality  good,  we  call  him  a  morally  good  man. 
When,  on  the  other  hand,  he  obeys  the  latter  law 
to  the  denial  of  the  former,  we  pronounce  his  mo- 
rality evil,  calling  him  a  morally  evil  man.  Thus 
morality  always  implies  a  conflict  in  the  subject  be- 
tween the  two  laws  of  his  finite  consciousness.  It 
would  be  utterly  impossible  without  such  conflict. 
If  charity  or  the  social  law  dictated  nothing  contrary 
to  self-love  or  the  natural  law,  then  I  should  never 
defer  to  my  neighbor,  and  consequently  would  dis- 


146  MORALITY    AND 

claim  all  moral  goodness.  And  if  self-love  or  the 
natural  law  prompted  no  infringement  of  charity  or 
the  social  law,  I  should  never  exalt  myself  above 
my  neighbor,  and  so  would  disclaim  all  moral  evil. 

Morality  then  is  conditioned  upon  a  conflict  or  an- 
tagonism between  nature  and  society,  between  self- 
love  and  charity,  between  my  natural  inclination  and 
my  social  sympathies.  When  I  practically  subject 
my  natural  inclinations  or  appetites  to  my  social 
sympathies  you  pronounce  me  a  good  man  ;  when 
I  practically  subject  the  latter  to  the  former,  you 
pronounce  me  an  evil  man. 

Or  let  me  state  the  same  truth  in  larger  charac- 
ters. Morality  is  conditioned  upon  an  antagonism 
between  the  private  and  public  elements  in  human- 
ity, upon  a  conflict  between  me  and  the  race,  be- 
tween myself  and  some  other  self  Accordingly,  I 
am  either  morally  good  or  morally  evil,  as  I  practi- 
cally abase  myself  to  others,  or  practically  exalt 
myself  above  them. 

Clearly,  then,  morality  expresses  a  very  imperfect 
development  of  the  individual  life,  such  a  develop- 
ment as  exhibits  the  individual  still  in  subjection 
to  nature  or  society.  It  does  not  characterize 
man's  perfect  individuality,  that  which  he  de- 
rives from  God  alone,  and  which  presupposes  the 


THE    PERFECT  LIFE.  147 

complete  reconciliation  of  nature  and  society,  or 
self-love  and  charity.  The  divine  or  perfect  man, 
the  Artist,  ignores  both  these  principles  of  action. 
He  acts  with  no  view  to  benefit  himself  or  to  bene- 
fit others,  but  simply  to  express  his  own  delight,  to 
embody  his  own  conception  of  beauty.  Of  course 
it  is  requisite  in  order  to  his  doing  this,  that  he  be 
in  amicable  relation  both  with  nature  and  man,  or 
that  his  physical  and  social  subsistence  be  sure. 
Because  until  these  conditions  be  fulfilled,  he  can- 
not give  diligent  heed  to  the  inspirations  of  God  in 
his  soul,  but  must  find  himself  forever  drawn  aside 
to  fight  with  his  circumstances. 

In  thus  making  morality  to  characterize  our  im- 
perfect development,  T  do  not  intend  to  dishonor  it,  or 
deny  it  a  true  historic  function.  I  hold  it  to  have  been 
both  an  inevitable  and  desirable  feature  of  human 
experience.  For  our  true  individuality  involves  the 
complete  lordship  or  dominion  of  nature.  But  you 
have  only  to  glance  at  the  universahty  of  nature,  to 
see  how  impossible  it  would  be  for  the  individual  to 
attain  to  its  lordship  or  mastery  without  the  aid  of 
his  fellow-man,  or  society.  Society,  then,  as  guar- 
anteeing man  his  lordship  or  dominion  over  nature, 
exerts  a  powerful  claim  upon  his  allegiance,  upon 
his  grateful  regard.     And  if  man  resist  this  claim, 


148  MORALITY    AND 

if  he  obey  the  prompting  of  nature  to  the  denial  of 
the  social  claim,  he  justly  incurs  the  reproach  of 
evil-doing.  He  acts  in  this  case  just  as  the  planet 
would  act  which  should  obey  its  centrifugal  impulse 
to  the  denial  of  its  centripetal  one.  As  the  planet 
would,  in  so  doing,  become  dissipated  in  space, 
thus  forfeiting  its  individuality,  so  the  man  who 
obeys  nature  or  self-love  to  the  denial  of  society 
or  brotherly  love,  would  become  immersed  in  na- 
ture, sunken  in  mere  brutahty,  so  forfeiting  his 
human  individuality.  Society,  therefore,  is  a  ne- 
cessary corrective  force  to  that  of  nature  in  its  ope- 
ration upon  the  human  individualit}^  It  serves  the 
same  use  precisely  to  the  individual  as  the  centri- 
petal or  attractive  force  of  nature  does  to  the  planet, 
that  is,  giving  him  a  continual  reaction  against  na- 
ture, and  so  preventing  the  otherwise  inevitable 
absorptioDr-of  his  individuality. 

Let  our  moral  history  have  its  due  honor  there- 
fore, as  a  true  development,  but  let  it  never  be  look- 
ed upon  as  a  final  development,  as  the  consumma- 
tion of  human  destiny.  Such  an  idea  would  be  in 
the  last  degree  opprobrious  to  God  and  man.  Cer- 
tainly no  Christian  should  tolerate  it  for  a  moment, 
for  it  covers  every  word  and  work  of  the  Christ  with 
mockery   and   derision.     He  declared  the    divine 


THE  perfp:ct  life.  149 

forgiveness  of  all  sin,  of  all  moral  defilement.  Now 
as  it  is  incredible  that  God  should  tolerate  orforgive 
any  contrariety  to  his  own  nature,  the  inference  from 
this  declaration  of  the  Christ  considered  as  a  true 
divine  herald,  is,  that  our  moral  delinquencies  ex- 
hibit no  such  contrariety,  but  merely  a  falling  short 
of  the  divine  image.  They  must  be  a  falling  short  of 
this  image,  otherwise  they  would  not  need  for- 
giveness. And  they  cannot  imply  a  contrariety 
to  it,  otherwise  they  would  not  receive  forgive- 
ness. 

We  cannot  deny  this  inference,  and  still  admit 
the  truth  of  Christianity.  The  whole  scope  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Christ  proceeds  upon  the  assumption 
of  man's  redemption  from  the  bondage  of  nature 
and  his  fellow-man,  into  the  sole  subjection  of  God. 
All  manner  of  sin,  he  said,  against  the  Father  and 
the  Son  should  be  forgiven  ;  but  the  sin  against  the 
Holy  Spirit  should  not  be  forgiven  either  in  this 
world  or  the  coming  one.  It  is  as  if  he  said,  "  man 
may  exliibit  any  want  of  conformity  to  the  divine 
Love  or  the  divine  Wisdom  ;  that  is,  may  be  very 
selfish  in  heart  and  very  stupid  in  intellect ;  and  his 
destiny  remain  unaffected.  But  he  cannot  resist  the 
divine  Power,  or  Inspiration,  in  his  own  soul  with- 
out utter  defeat  to  the  end  of  his  creation."  Accord- 

8 


150  MORALITY    AND 

ing  to  this  doctrine,  the  only  sin  for  man  which 
God  cognizes  is  the  sin  against  the  Holy  Spirit,  or 
the  resistance  of  his  own  genius,  and  this,  thank 
God,  is  a  sin  which  no  individual  is  capable  of  com- 
mitting. Both  nature  and  society  may  prevent  me 
following  my  genius,  may  keep  it  completely  latent 
and  undiscovered,  by  holding  me  in  incessant  bon- 
dage to  themselves,  but  while  God  remains  supreme 
they  cannot  make  me  actually  resist  it.  Insanity 
or  suicide  would  speedily  decide  that  contro- 
versy in  my  favor. 

The  practical  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  is, 
my  friends,  that  we  should  cease  to  hold  the  indi- 
vidual accountable  for  his  moral  deHnquencies.  We 
should  give  up  the  indolent  and  futile  habit  of 
blaming  the  thief,  the  har,  the  adulterer,  the  drunk- 
ard for  their  abominations,  and  place  the  blame 
where  alone  it  truly  belongs,  upon  our  defective 
social  organization.  Should  a  planet  fly  from  its 
orbit  and  become  dispersed  in  space,  you  might 
with  exactly  the  same  propriety  hold  it  accountable 
for  the  result,  as  you  hold  me  accountable  for  my 
paramount  obedience  to  the  law  of  nature,  issuing 
perchance  in  drunkenness,  perchance  in  theft.  Un- 
doubtedly the  ruin  of  the  planet  would  ensue  in  that 
case,  but  you  would  not  charge  this  ruin  upon  the 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  16 

planet  itself,  but  upon  the  constitution  of  nature 
which  allowed  its  centrifugal  or  projectile  impetus 
to  overcome  its  centripetal  or  attractive  one.  The 
planet  itself  does  not  create  these  forces,  but  simply 
obeys  them.  If,  therefore,  the  one  grow  stronger 
than  the  other,  and  sweep  the  planet  to  destruction, 
and  a  suit  be  thereupon  instituted  for  damages,  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  heirs  of  the  planet  have  the 
exclusive  right  to  the  position  of  plaintiff,  while  the 
general  constitution  of  nature  should  occupy  that 
of  defendant. 

In  like  manner,  I  do  not  create  the  laws  of  my 
finite  self-consciousness,  I  merely  obey  them.  As 
Swedenborg  has  shown  in  a  very  complete  manner, 
neither  charity  nor  self-love,  neither  moral  good 
nor  moral  evil,  has  its  origin  in  the  individual,  but 
only  in  good  or  bad  association.  All  charity,  he 
says,  is  an  influx  into  man  from  heavenly  associa- 
tion ;  all  self-love  an  influx  into  him  from  infernal 
association.  Hence  he  says,  God  never  attributes 
good  nor  evil  to  a  man,  never  sees  in  him  either 
merit  or  demerit.  In  truth,  he  represents  God  as 
wholly  ignoring  the  moral  man,  the  man  who  is 
subject  either  to  nature  or  society,  either  to  hell  or 
heaven,  and  acknowledging  only  the  Lord  or  per- 
fect   man,  the  man    who   subjects    both   hell   and 


U2 


MORALITY    AND 


heaven  to  his  own  individuality,  and  so  ensures  an 
unimpeded  intercourse  between  the  divine  and  hu- 
man, between  the  Creator  and  creature. 

If  these  things  be  true,  and  they  cannot  be  denied 
save  at  the  expense  of  rationality,  and  the  propor- 
tionate advantage  of  brutality  or  materiality,  then 
clearly  I  should  not  be  held   accountable  for   my 
moral  delinquencies.     If  I  obey  the  law  of  nature 
to  excess — if  I   yield  self-love    a  disproportionate 
homage — and  if,  at  the  same  time,  my  subjection  to 
this  law  is  purely  passive,   depending  not  on  my 
own  will  or  foresight,  but  upon  the  countervailing 
power  of  another  law,  the  law  of  society  ;  then 
manifestly  this  excess  or  disproportion  is  not  an  at- 
tribute of  my  individuality,  but  only  of  society. 
Society  is  bound  by  the  interests  of  my  individual- 
ity, of  which  it  is  the  guardian,  not  to  allow  nature 
an  excessive  grasp  of  my  energies.     If,  then,  nature 
exert  this  grasp,  the  blame  attaches  not  to  me,  but 
to  society,  which  fails  to  attract  me  to  my  kind  as 
powerfully  as  nature  contrives  to  seduce  me  away. 
To  be  sure,  I  suffer  in  this  state  of  things,  becoming 
perhaps  a  miserable  sot  or  dexterous  rogue,  turning 
my  individuality  into  a  hideous  distortion  of  the  true 
divine  image.     But  pity  and  not  blame  is  what  this 
lot  demands,  for  it  is  one  of  suffering.     I  suffer.     It 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  1§3 

is  only  society  which  sins  in  allowing  me  to  suffer, 
that  is,  in  so  bedevilling  and  embittering  my  rela- 
tions with  my  fellow-man,  that  I  am  necessarily 
driven  to  seek  in  nature  a  solace  which  nature  is 
not  empowered  to  yield. 

This,  I  am  profoundly  convinced,  is  the  attitude 
which  it  behooves  every  lover  of  God  and  man  to 
assume  towards  our  existing  society,  an  attitude  of 
utter  contempt  and  defiance  as  to  its  justifying  and 
condemning  power.  No  other  basis  is  to  be  found 
for  the  vileness  which  besets  us,  no  foothold  exists 
for  our  prevalent  unrighteousness,  but  in  the  limi- 
tary selfhood  which  society  imposes  on  us.  It  is 
only  because  society  denies  me  a  consciousness  of 
unity  with  God,  by  obstinately  limiting  my  unity 
with  nature  and  man,  that  I  become  tortured  with 
this  conscience  of  sin.  Society,  that  arch-liar  and 
hypocrite  which  continually  seeks  to  justify  itself 
by  the  defamation  of  its  offspring,  is  my  sole  accuser 
before  God.  Destroy,  therefore,  the  imperfections 
of  our  social  institutions,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing, 
allow  man's  internal  freedom  a  perfect  outward  de- 
velopment, and  you  instantly  destroy  all  unright- 
eousness and  all  Pharisaic  pride  among  men.  In 
that  event  our  mere  relative  or  contingent  good 
would  give  place  to  positive  and  universal  good. 


154  MORALITY    AND 

No  man  would  then  appear  good  by  the  contrast  of 
another's  evil,  nor  any  appear  evil  by  the  contrast 
of  another's  good,  but  every  man  would  be  positive- 
ly good,  good  by  the  manifest  and  unlimited  in- 
dwelling of  the  divine  power. 

This  is  the  last  great  triumph  of  humanity,  the 
signal  for  the  complete  inauguration  of  God's  king- 
dom on  earth — the  triumph  of  the  individual  over 
society.T  Let  society  give  up  its  unhallowed  and 
futile  labor  of  exalting  itself  above  man,  and  become 
as  it  should  be  purely  subservient  and  tributary  to 
him,  then  no  man  will  incur  the  reproach  of  evil  by 
an  undue  devotion  to  the  law  of  his  nature.  By 
forgetting,  as  it  now  does,  its  intrinsic  vanity,  and 
exalting  itself  into  a  divine  end,  it  not  only  corrupts 
and  degrades  man,  but  invites,  nay  solicits,  the 
vengeance  of  God. 

For  there  can  be  no  more  flagrant  affront  to  the 
Divine  Humanity,  to  God's  end  in  creation,  than 
for  the  moral  life  to  regard  itself  as  final.  If  I  take 
my  stand  upon  my  moral  attributes,  upon  the  life 
I  derive  from  my  relations  to  my  own  body  and 
my  fellow-man,  if  I  say  on  the  one  hand  that 
there  is  no  higher  good,  no  good  more  positive  for 
me,  than  that  which  stands  in  my  fulfilment  of  these 
relations,  and  on  the  other  no  lower  evil,   no  evil 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  W6' 

more  positive  for  me,  than  that  which  stands  in 
my  neglect  of  these  relations,  I  do,  in  reality, 
dwarf  my  destiny,  and  debar  the  divine  com- 
munication to  me.  If  I  persuade  myself  or 
allow  society  to  persuade  me  that  God  desires  only 
my  moral  excellence,  only  my  exemplary  obe- 
dience to  all  my  duties  as  husband  and  father,  neigh- 
bor and  citizen,  I  am  under  a  profound  misconcep- 
tion of  the  divine  righteousness.  What  God  wants 
is  to  see  a  perfect  society  among  men,  to  see  an  in- 
Jinite  fellowship  binding  every  man  with  every  man, 
because  this  society  or  fellowship  is  a  necessary 
means  to  the  revelation  of  His  own  glory  in  man. 
But  this  perfect  society,  this  infinite  fellowship  of 
man  with  man,  is  incessantly  baulked  by  our  moral 
differences,  the  differences  engendered  by  our  petty 
social  institutions.  It  is  impossible  that  any  true 
fellowship  or  concord  can  subsist  where  one  party 
is  good  and  another  evil,  because  the  former  feels 
a  sense  of  merit,  a  sense  of  superior  desert,  which 
incessantly  piques  the  jealousy  of  the  other  and  so 
defeats  every  emotion  of  a  tender  and  enduring 
friendship. 

If  we  could  be  content  with  being  good  husbands, 
good  parents,  good  neighbors  and  citizens ;  if  we 
could  refrain  from  indulging  a  secret  chuckle  of  self- 


156  MORALITY    AND 

complacency  in  these  qualifications;  if  we  could 
refi-ain  from  viewing  ourselves  as  inwardly  supe- 
rior on  these  accounts  to  publicans  and  harlots  ; 
then  no  objection  would  lie,  because  then  we  should 
not  identify  ourselves  with  society,  nor  drown  our 
vital  force  in  the  feculent  mud  of  morality.  Then 
we  should  look  upon  all  these  relations  as  purely 
provisional,  as  only  so  many  advancing  steps  or 
means  to  the  realization  of  that  perfect  society 
through  which  God  would  achieve  the  complete  de- 
velopment and  aggrandizement  of  every  individual 
soul,  or  secure  His  unimpeded  communion  with 
every  creature  He  has  made. 

But  such  is  not  the  fact.  We  are  not  content  to 
fulfil  these  relations.  We  make  their  fulfilment  a 
ground  of  merit  before  God,  a  means  of  righteous- 
ness. For  doing  all  these  things  we  look  upon  our- 
selves as  so  much  better  than  the  man  who  stands 
afar  off,  and  has  nothing  but  sins  to  reckon  up  before 
God.  Consequently,  by  just  so  much  as  we  deem 
ourselves  already  to  possess,  do  we  grow  indifferent 
to  what  God  has  in  store  for  us.  Thus  society,  by 
looking  upon  its  present  attainments  or  institutions 
as  final,  and  teaching  its  subjects  to  esteem  them- 
selves righteous  or  unrighteous  in  God's  sight  as 
they  stand  affected  to  these  institutions,  really  de- 


THE  PERFECT  LIFE.  157 

feats  the  divine  righteousness,  opposes  the  advent 
of  the  divine  humanity,  and  keeps  man  in  perpetual 
bondage  to  the  beggarly  elements  of  this  world's 
knowledge.  Forgetting  its  intrinsic  stewardship  or 
subordination,  looking  upon  itself  not  as  the  servant 
of  man  but  as  his  superior  and  affixing  its  foolish 
praise  or  foolish  reproach  to  him  as  he  obeys  or  dis- 
obeys its  will,  it  snatches  him  from  the  hand  of  his 
Creator,  defeats  every  access  of  the  divine  image  in 
him,  and  reduces  him  oftentimes  to  a  condition  be- 
low the  brute. 

For  all  these  things  society  avouches  itself  trait- 
orous to  God  and  the  inevitable  heir  of  his  wrath. 
In  this  conflict  there  can  be  no  paltering  nor  com- 
promise on  the  part  of  God.     He  must  by  the  very 
necessity  of  His  perfection  become  the  source  of  in- 
finite ability  and  joy  to  every  creature.    If  therefore 
any  man  or  any  society  of  men  choose  to  take  their 
stand  upon  their  morality,  upon  any  of  those  differ- 
ences which  separate  them  from  other  men  and 
other  societies,  and  say  these  things  constitute  God's 
true  glory  in  man,   constitute   the  true  ground   of 
hope  and  expectation  towards   Him,  then  God  is 
bound  to  ally  himself  with  the  reverse  aspect  of 
humanity,  is  bound  to  declare  Himself  the  friend  of 
publicans  and   sinners  rather  then    of  these  men, 

8* 


158  MORALITY    AND 

and  to  devise  accordingly  their  utter  and  pitiless 
overthrow. 

Thus  it  is  not  the  moral  life  itself  which  is  hurtful, 
but  only  the  stupid  pride  and  self-complacency 
with  which  we  view  our  attainments  in  that  direc- 
tion. We  become  satisfied  with  ourselves  as  moral- 
ly engendered,  as  morally  distinguished  from  other 
men,  and  hence  when  the  divine  man  presents  himself 
in  any  forerunner  or  harbinger,  he  is  so  totally  unhke 
ourselves  that  we  see  no  beauty  in  him  that  wc 
should  covet  him.  Well  said  the  Christ,  "  how 
hard  is  it  for  them  that  have  riches  to  enter  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  !"  It  is,  in  fact,  easier  for  a 
camel  to  go  through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  a 
rich  man  to  enter  the  kingdom  of  God.  Why  ? 
Because  the  sole  title  to  that  kingdom  lies  in  the 
all-giving  and  nought-exacting  love  of  God,  and 
therefore  to  suppose  any  previous  qualification  in 
the  subject  apposite  to  it,  whether  such  qualification 
be   natural  or  moral,  is  grossly  to  belie  it. 

But  the  evil  is  irremediable  while  society  con- 
tinues to  interpose  between  man  and  God.  So 
long  as  society  declares  itself  final,  looking  upon 
man  as  made  for  it  instead  of  itself  as  made  for  him, 
it  must  inevitably  degrade  him  into  a  coxcomb  or 
a  slave.     Representing  his  destiny  as  merely  social 


THE  PERFECT  LIFE.  159 

or  relative  because  standing  in  his  voluntary  sub- 
jection to  his  fellow-man,  instead  of  individual  and 
positive  because  standing  in  his  spontaneous  sub- 
jection to  God,  it  teaches  him  to  regard  morality  as 
God's  prime  end  in  creation,  and  to  expect  His  fa- 
vor accordingly  or  dread  His  frown  just  as  he 
obeys  or  disobeys  his  social  obligations.  Thus  it 
turns  the  affluent  fountain  of  my  life  into  a  pinched 
and  miserly  task-master,  making  my  hope  towards 
Him  contingent  upon  a  certain  foregone  good  in  my- 
self rather  than  upon  His  own  exuberant  grace. 
In  thus  sundering  me  from  God,  in  thus  removing 
Him  to  such  a  freezing  distance  from  me,  it  renders 
me  the  prey  of  every  cowardly  imagination,  of 
every  disgusting  and  diabolical  superstition.  For 
it  bids  me,  above  all  things,  distrust  my  own  spon- 
taneous emotions,  my  own  inward  affections.  As 
it  makes  God  wholly  external  to  me,  as  it  makes 
Him  remote  from  me  by  all  its  own  breadth  of  in- 
terposition between  us,  more  remote  from  me  than 
any  man,  so  it  makes  my  inward  emotions  and  af- 
fections further  from  Him  even  than  my  senses  are, 
and  converts  them  into  a  proportion  ably  fallacious 
testimony  concerning  Him.  Leading  me  thus  to 
distrust  above  all  things  my  inward  self,  my  pri- 
vate emotions  and  sympathies,  it  at  the  same  time 


160  MORALITY    AND 

and  in  exactly  corresponding  measure  leads  me  to 
trust  the  testimony  of  my  senses,  and  especially  the  testi- 
mony of  other  men  my  elders,  and  more  especially 
still  the  men  who  lived  near  the  reputed  birth  of  time, 
and  had,  therefore,  the  most  immediate  news  con- 
cerning Him. 

Thus  moralism  is  the  parent  of  fetichism,  or  su- 
perstitious worship,  the  parent  of  all  sensual  and 
degrading  ideas  of  God,  the  parent  of  all  cruel  and 
unclean  and  abominable  worship.  Leading  me  as 
it  does  to  regard  my  inward  self  as  corrupt,  to  dis- 
trust my  heart's  aifections  as  the  deadliest  enmity 
to  God,  it  logically  prompts  the  crucifixion  of  those 
affections  as  especially  well  pleasing  to  Him,  and 
bids  me  therefore  offer  my  child  to  the  flames,  clothe 
my  body  in  sackcloth  and  ashes,  lacerate  my  skin, 
renounce  the  comforts  and  refinements  of  life,  turn 
hermit  or  monk,  forswear  marriage,  wear  lugubri- 
ous and  hideous  dresses  that  insult  God's  daylight, 
and  make  myself,  in  short,  under  the  guise  of  a 
voluntary  and  mendacious  humility,  perfectly  ul- 
cerous with  spiritual  pride,  a  mass  of  living  puru- 
lence  and  putridity. 

It  is,  I  repeat,  simply  inevitable  that  moralism, 
or  the  doctrine  of  man's  subjection  to  society,  should 
produce  these  effects,   should  enormously  inflame 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  161 

the  pride  of  one  class  of  its  subjects,  and  as  enor- 
mously depress  that  of  another  class.  For  if  I,  be- 
ing a  morally  good  man,  that  is,  conscientiously  ab- 
staining from  all  injustice  or  injury  to  my  neighbor, 
come  to  regard  that  character  as  constituting  a  dis- 
tinction for  me  in  the  sight  of  God,  as  giving  me  a 
distinction  there  above  some  poor  devil  of  an  oppo- 
site character,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  I  must  become 
as  inwardly  full  of  conceit  and  inhumanity  as  a  nut 
is  full  of  meat.  How  can  it  be  otherwise  ?  If  the 
All-seeing  behold  in  me  any  superiority  to  the  most 
leprous  wretch  that  defiles  your  streets,  then  clear- 
ly I  have  the  highest  sanction  for  esteeming  myself 
above  that  wretch,  and  treating  him  not  with  fellow- 
feeling,   but  with  condescension  and  scorn. 

I  know  the  unctuous  cant,  the  shabby  sophistry, 
which  prevails  upon  this  subject.  I  know  it  will  be 
replied  that  I  "  ought  not"  forsooth  !  to  do  thus, 
that  it  "  would  be  wrong  "  forsooth  !  for  me  to  exalt 
myself  above  this  poor  wretch  on  the  ground  of  my 
superior  morality.  But  wherefore  wrong?  If 
that  morality  really  distinguish  me  before  God,  if 
it  constitute  a  superior  claim  to  the  divine  favor, 
then  it  were  flat  inconsistency  in  me,  it  were  flat 
treason  to  God  not  to  acknowledge  it  in  my  practice. 
Can   God's  judgment  be  unrighteous  ?     Wherefore 


162  MORALITY    AND 

then  should  I  hesitate  in  any  case  to  conform  my 
conduct  to  it  ? 

*'Ah!"  replies  some  one,  ^^hutyou  do  no  not  see 
as  God  sees.  If  you  saw  all  the  temptations  that 
have  beset  that  poor  wretch,  if  you  could  see,  in 
the  first  place,  the  superior  intensity  of  his  passions 
to  yours,  his  comparative  intellectual  disadvantages, 
his  depraved  circumstances  from  infancy  up,  and 
so  forth,  you  would  possibly  regard  your  difference 
as  small,  and  abate  somewhat  the  tone  of  your 
triumph."  This  is  all  true.  This  is  exactly  what 
I  myself  say.  But  then  if  the  circumstances  here 
alleged  should  affect  my  judgment  of  my  poor  friend, 
much  more  should  they  affect  His  judgment  to 
whom  they  are  so  much  better  known  !  If  I  cease 
on  these  grounds  to  exalt  myself  over  my  fellow, 
how  much  more  must  God  cease  to  exalt  me  ! 
But  if  this  be  so,  what  becomes  of  your  moral  dis- 
tinctions in  His  sight  ?  If  He  have  no  higher  es- 
teem for  me,  a  morally  good  man,  than  He  has  for 
you,  a  morally  evil  man,  then  it  is  clear  that  the  moral 
life  is  not  the  life  He  confers,  the  life  about  which 
He  is  chiefly  solicitous. 

You  perceive  that  you  are  here  in  a  dilemma. 
Either  God  esteems  me  a  virtuous  man  above  you 
a  vicious  man,  or  He  does  not.     If  Hedoes,  then 


THE  PERFECT  LIFE.  163 

inasmuch  as  all  His  judgments  are  right,  and  de- 
signed for  our  instruction,  I  should  instantly  learn 
to  esteem  myself  above  you,  that  is,  to  withhold 
from  you  sympathy  or  fellowship,  in  which  case 
I  become  inhuman  by  virtue  of  a  direct  divine  influ- 
ence. If,  on  the  other  hand,  He  do  not  esteem  me 
a  virtuous  man,  above  you  a  vicious  man,  then  you 
deny  the  moral  life  to  be  God's  life  in  man. 

How  will  you  extricate  yourself  from  this  dilem- 
ma ?  There  is  but  one  way.  You  will  say  that  it 
was  not  your  intention  to  represent  God  as  holding 
one  man  intrinsically  superior,  or  superior  in  himself, 
to  another,  but  relatively  or  socially  superior  only ; 
superior,  that  is,  with  reference  to  the  purposes  of 
society.  There  is  consequently  no  further  quarrel 
between  us.  Moral  distinctions  belong  purely  to  our 
earthly  genesis  and  history.  They  do  not  attach  to 
us  as  the  creatures  of  God.  As  the  creature  of 
society,  I  am  either  good  or  evil.  I  am  good  as 
keeping  my  natural  gratification  within  the  limits  of 
social  prescription,  or  evil  as  allowing  it  to  transcend 
those  limits.  But  as  the  creature  of  God,  or  in  my 
most  vital  and  final  selfhood,.!  am  positively  good  ; 
good  without  any  oppugnancy  of  evil ;  good,  not  by 
any  stinted  angelic  mediation,  but  by  the  direct 
and  unstinted  indweUing  of  the  Godhead. 


164  MORALITY    AND 

I  have  now  expressed  my  thought  with  more 
detail  than  befits  a  popular  Lecture.  But  as  I  con- 
ceive the  subject  to  be  of  especial  interest  to  all 
thoughtful  minds,  I  am  anxious  to  commend  it  to 
your  perfect  apprehension.  With  this  view,  let  me 
still  further  ask  your  indulgent  attention,  while  I 
discuss  an  objection  which  may  possibly  arise  in 
the  minds  of  some  of  my  audience. 

It  was  alleged,  on  the  delivery  of  the  preceding 
Lecture,  that  I  deny  moral  distinctions.  The  alle- 
gation is  vaguely  worded,  but  is  doubtless  worthy 
of  respectful  investigation.  If  it  mean,  then,  that  I 
deny  any  difference  between  good  and  evil  actions  ; 
that  I  call  murder,  adultery,  theft,  and  so  forth, 
good  actions ;  of  course  the  charge  is  silly  and  not 
worth  refuting.  In  this  sense  no  man  ever  denied 
moral  distinctions.  No  man — not  even  the  unfor- 
tunate subject  of  them — ever  justified  adultery, 
theft,  murder,  or  falsehood.  No  man  ever  did  one 
of  these  things  spontaneously,  or  at  the  instance  of 
his  taste.  I  have  indeed  heard  of  persons  who  had 
a  mania  for  theft ;  who,  from  some  exceptional 
cerebral  organization-,  could  omit  no  opportunity  to 
enrich  themselves  at  the  expense  of  others.  But 
these  cases  are  regarded,  of  course,  as  exceptions 
to  the  ordinary  tenor  of  human   nature,  and    as 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  165 

putting  the  subject  beyond  the  pale  of  responsi- 
bility. Because,  if  there  be  a  constitutional  aptitude 
to  this  offence  in  the  party,  you  manifestly  acquit 
the  party  himself  of  it.  You  would  no  more  hold 
him  personally  responsible  under  these  circumstan- 
ces, than  you  would  hold  him  personally  liable  for  a 
hare-lip  or  any  other  morbid  development.  No 
man,  then,  I  repeat,  ever  injured  another  from  taste 
or  spontaneity.  Hence  no  man  ever  justified  a 
moral  delinquency,  ever  supposed  himself  acting 
worthily  in  taking  his  neighbor's  life,  property,  or 
good  name,  or  in  seducing  the  affections  of  his  wife. 

The  objector  consequently  does  not  mean  to  say 
that  I  confound  good  and  evil  actions,  since  the 
constitution  of  the  human  mind  makes  that  impos- 
sible. 

He  means  then,  doubtless,  that  I  do  not  regard 
the  man  who  does  good  actions  as  intrinsically  bet- 
ter than  the  man  who  does  evil  actions.  He  means, 
doubtless,  that  I  do  not  regard  the  morally  good 
man  as  possessing  any  superior  claims  upon  the 
divine  favor  to  the  morally  evil  man,  but  view  them 
both  as  heirs  of  the  same  eventual  and  glorious 
destiny.  If  the  objector  means  this  by  his  charge, 
then  let  me  suggest  an  amendment  of  its  form.  Let 
him  say  to  me:  you  deny,  not  the  existence  or 


166  MORALITY  AND 

importance  of  moral  distinctions  among  men,  bat 
simply  their  divinity.  You  deny  that  God  is  in  any 
measure  privy  to  these  distinctions. 

To  the  charge,  thus  amended,  I  freely  plead 
guilty.  I  am  persuaded  that  God's  eyes,  however 
universal  their  empire,  have  never  yet  been  as- 
tounded by  the  appearance  of  evil  in  His  creatures. 
Whence  should  that  evil  come?  It  cannot  come 
from  Himself,  who  is  essential  good.  Whence, 
then,  should  it  have  come  ?  For  the  supposition,  you 
perceive,  makes  it  a  phenomenon  of  God's  creation ; 
it  is  the  possibility  of  evil  in  God's  creature  that  we 
are  discussing.  How  could  evil  be  possible  in  that 
creature  ?  You  may  say  that  it  came  from  the 
Devil.     Very  well ;  let  that  answer  stand. 

If  evil  came  from  the  Devil,  then  the  Devil  in 
infusing  evil  into  God's  creature  acted  either  with 
God's  consent  or  without  it.  If  he  acted  with  it, 
then  of  course  God  saw  that  it  would  not  injure  the 
creature,  since  He  had  methods  of  turning  it  all  to 
the  creature's  superior  profit,  and  so  proving  the 
Devil  a  fool  for  his  pains.  If  he  acted  without 
God's  consent,  then  of  course  you  give  the  Devil 
not  only  a  superior  power  to  God,  but  a  superior 
power  over  God's  own  work,  or  in  the  sphere  of 
God's  own  activity.     That  is  to  say,  you  make  the 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  167 

absolute  creature  of  infinite  Good  confess  himself 
the  offspring  of  a  deeper  paternity — the  paternity  of 
infinite  Evil. 

But  take  either  branch  you  choose  of  this  hideous 
dilemma,  you  manifestly  absolve  the  creature  him- 
self of  all  defilement.  For  whether  the  Devil  infuse 
evil  into  him  with  or  without  the  consent  of 
Deity,  it  is  clearly  an  operation  under  which  the 
creature  himself  is  passive,  and  I  fancy  that  even 
the  Devil  is  too  good  a  logician  to  hold  one  responsi- 
ble for  his  passions,  but  only  for  his  actions.  Any 
child  might  otherwise  refute  him.  My  passional 
nature  means  my  various  susceptibility  of  enjoy- 
ment and  suffering  from  nature  and  man ;  my 
passions  are  merely  the  concrete  forms  of  this  va- 
rious susceptibility.  You  would  not  therefore  hold 
me  responsible  for  my  passions,  unless  you  at  the 
same  time  ascribed  to  me  the  paternity  of  nature 
and  man — unless  you  at  the  same  time  held  me  to 
have  created  this  universal  frame  of  nature  and  soci- 
ety to  which  these  passions  owe  all  their  existence. 

Thus  the  Devil  turns  out  an  unprofitable  hypo- 
thesis. He  is  an  infinite  lie.  No  one  can  trust  in 
him  without  being  confounded.  He  looms  porten- 
tously large  in  all  infant  cosmologies — in  all  those 
theories  of  creation  which  are  constructed  by  the 


168  MORALITY    AND 

sensuous  imagination  of  the  race ;  but  you  have 
only  to  prick  him  with  the  smallest  pin  of  science, 
and  he  fairly  roars  you  a  confession  of  egregious 
imbecility. 

The  entire  traditional  doctrine  of  the  origin  of 
evil  is  irrational  and  abhorrent.  In  one  phasis  it 
asperses  the  divine  goodness  ;  in  another  the  divine 
power.  One  hypothesis  represents  God  as  allowing 
evil  to  appear  in  the  creature  only  that  He  might 
display  His  sovereignty,  not  in  reconciUng  it  with 
good  and  so  affording  a  basis  for  His  own  adequate 
manifestation  in  nature,  but  in  afflicting  it  with 
ceaseless  torments.  Surely  this  is  a  puerile  con- 
ception of  God  which  makes  him  capable  of  osten- 
tation, capable  of  enjoying  a  mere  empty  parade  of 
His  power.  The  conception  converts  Him,  in  fact, 
into  an  aggravated  bully,  intent  upon  the  display  of 
his  physical  prowess.  It  is  grovelling  and  disgust- 
ing beyond  every  other  product  of  our  sensuous  im- 
agination. It  degrades  Deity  below  the  brute  even. 
For  the  tiger  makes  no  sacrifice  to  ostentation.  He 
inflicts  no  suffering  in  demonstration  of  his  power 
and  the  consequent  gratification  of  his  vanity,  but 
only  in  satisfaction  of  an  honest  natural  appetite. 
If  accordingly,  this  hypothesis  of  creation  were 
just,  moral  distinctions  would  be   seen  to  claim  a 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  169 

basis  in  God's  want  of  love,  in  His  inferiority  to 
tigers. 

The  other  hypothesis  attributes  evil  to  a  defect, 
not  of  the  divine  goodness,  but  of  the  divine  power. 
It  represents  God  as  designing  to  make  man  mo- 
rally good.  But  as  moral  good  is  in  its  very  nature 
finite  or  conditional,  as  it  is  conditioned  upon  the 
inseparable  coexistence  of  moral  evil,  so  God,  how- 
ever much  He  may  desire  it,  is  practically  unable 
to  keep  evil  out  of  the  universe.  From  the  nature 
of  the  case,  from  the  nature  of  the  good  He  designs 
to  bestow.  He  cannot  make  one  man  good  without 
making  another  evil.  Hence  you  perceive  that  evil 
stalks  into  creation  in  spite  of  God,  being  involved 
in  the  good  He  would  create.  The  only  way,  con- 
sequently, in  which  He  might  exclude  it,  would  be 
to  forego  His  creative  design  altogether.  For  His 
design  being  to  create  moral  good,  and  moral  good 
standing  in  the  inseparable  antagonism  of  moral 
evil,  in  effect  or  practically  His  design  is  to  create 
the  one  as  much  as  the  other. 

We  may,  indeed,  represent  the  evil  man  as  so 
much  inevitable  chips,  or  waste  material ;  but  we 
gain  nothing  by  this  motion.  For  is  not  he  always 
esteemed  an  imperfect  workman  who  leaves  chips 
behind  him,  who    cannot  work  without  a  shocking 


170  MORALITY    AND 

waste  of  material  ?  Our  divines  see  fit,  indeed,  to 
blink  all  these  monstrous  contradictions,  and  doubt- 
less they  have  a  reward.  But  is  it  not  gratuitous 
in  them  to  go  further  than  this,  and  represent  the 
Deity  not  merely  as  making  chips,  but  also  as  vin- 
dictively bestowing  an  everlasting  vitality  on  these 
chips  in  order  to  their  never-ending  combustion  ? 

According  to  this  hypothesis,  then,  you  perceive 
that  moral  distinctions  among  men  grow  out  of  a 
defect  in  the  divine  power.  The  former  hypothesis 
attributes  them  to  a  defect  of  God's  goodness,  or 
an  inferiority  of  His  internal  endowments.  The 
latter  attributes  them  to  a  defect  of  his  power  or  an 
inferiority  of  his  external  endowments.  Each  pro- 
ceeds upon  an  implication  of  His  imperfection, 
and  hence  they  are  both  alike  intrinsically  absurd 
and  blasphemous. 

Such  is  the  inevitable  effect  of  making  God  "  a 
respecter  of  persons."  If  you  make  His  life  moral, 
if  you  make  it  to  stand  in  the  antagonism  of  evil, 
you  necessarily  finite  or  degrade  Him,  and  render 
every  exertion  of  His  power  essentially  violent  and 
disorderly.  I  marvel  that  the  coincidence  of  revel- 
ation with  reason  on  this  subject  has  not  attracted 
more  attention.  For  the  very  opening  page  of  the 
Bible,  relates  that  when  Adam  under  the  tuition  of 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  171 

the  sensual  principle,  symbolized  by  the  serpent, 
came  to  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  or  the  ex- 
perience of  morality,  he  instantly  found  himself 
excluded  from  the  participation  of  the  divine  life. 

No,  my  friends,  we  may  rest  assured  that  this 
life  depends  upon  no  paltry  distinctions  of  good  and 
evil  among  its  subjects.     These  distinctions  prove 
only  our  destitution  of  it.     They  spring  not  from 
God,  but  from  our  ignorance  and  inexperience  of 
God.     They  spring  out  of  the  ignorance  which  so- 
ciety is  under  of  its  own  subordinate  relation  to 
man,  and  the  consequently  futile  efforts  it  makes  to 
justify  itself  at  his  expense.     Our  social  forms  or 
institutions  being  so  partial,  so  limitary,  so  imper- 
fect as  they  necessarily  must  be  in  the  infancy  of 
human   culture,   they   do   not  immediately  justify 
themselves  to  our  regard,  but  on  the  contrary  exact 
a  large  body  of  persons  to  conserve  and  administer 
them.     This  class  of  persons  accordingly,  because 
they  perform  such  eminent  public  uses,  soon  come 
to  enjoy  distinguished  honor,  wealth,  and  power; 
soon  come,  in  fact,  to  be  identified  with  society,  and 
to  isolate  its  interests  from  those  of  the  mass  of 
individual  members.    The  unrighteous  division  thus 
made  between, society  and  the  individual,  between 
the  public  and  private  interest  of  man,  is  the  great 


172  MORALITY  AND 

evil  under  which  humanity  groans,  and  with  which 
God's  providence  has  to  contend.  For  these  per- 
sons, the  ruhng  and  propertied  classes  who  are  thus 
identified  with  society,  forever  keep  it  from  ad- 
vancing with  the  advance  of  the  individual  genius. 
They  make  their  own  wants  the  measure  of  the 
wants  of  society — of  humanity.  While  they  can" 
clothe  themselves  in  purple  and  fine  linen  and  fare 
sumptuously  every  day  they  think  the  interests  of 
society  sufficiently  secured,  and  have  no  eye  for  the 
sores  of  the  great  Lazarus  of  humanity  who  lies  out- 
side of  their  gates.  Hence  these  people  incessantly 
dwarf  our  social  structure ;  incessantly  prevent  its 
keeping  pace  with  the  individual  life  ;  at  all  events, 
they  are  sure  to  make  no  concession  to  the  indi- 
vidual demand  so  long  as  resistance  to  that  demand 
consists  with  the  stability  of  their  usurpation. 

Society  must  therefore  make  haste  to  shed  this 
parasitic  life,  and  reconcile  itself  with  universal 
humanity.  Let  it  give  over  the  ungodly  labor  of 
exalting  itself  above  man,  of  subjecting  the  indi- 
vidual dignity  to  its  tyrannous  sway,  and  all  its 
disorders  will  instantly  cease.  So  long  as  it  pre- 
tends to  a  paramount  place  in  God's  regard ;  so 
long  as  it  believes  that  God  cares  for  it  first  and  for 
man    secondly,    and    therefore   strives  to   compel 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  173 

man's  spirit  into  its  allegiance,  the  whole  sweep 
and  torrent  of  God's  majestic  life  becomes  its  ene- 
my— becomes  pledged  to  subvert  its  power  and 
trail  its  glory  in  the  dust. 

Society  may  enact  its  foolish  revenges.  It  may 
paint  humanity  never  so  blackly.  It  may  persist 
in  stifling  man's  passional  freedom,  and  whenever 
the  sufferer  re-acts  by  God's  deathless  force  within 
him  against  this  compression,  it  may  variously  name 
him  liar,  murderer,  thief,  adulterer ;  may  confiscate 
his  goods,  degrade  his  family,  immure  him  in  prison, 
and  finally  quench  the  life  in  his  manly  bosom. 
But  God  is  not  mocked.  For  all  these  things  the 
grand  final  reckoning  comes  on  apace.  Every  drop 
of  criminal  blood  which  society  first  brews  and  then 
pours  out  upon  the  ground,  springs  up  an  armed 
hand  to  continue  the  quarrel,  until  at  last  society 
becomes  actually  beggared  by  her  own  pauper  and 
criminal  progeny,  until  at  last,  as  is  the  case  with 
England  at  present,  society  has  actually  no  room  to 
bestow  her  paupers  and  criminals  in,  and  wanders 
the  wide  world  over  begging  the  hospitality  of 
affrighted  islands* 

Be  assured  then,  my  friends,  that  crime  will 
grow,  that  human  life  and  every  human  possession 
will  continue  to  decline  in  value,  until  society  wakes 

9 


174  MORALITY    AND 

from  her  dismal  delusion,  and  confesses  herself 
the  obedient  steward  to  man.  When  she  confesses 
herself  no  longer  the  sovereign,  but  the  servant  of 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  within  her  borders; 
when  accordingly  she  no  longer  seeks  to  restrain, 
much  less  to  extirpate,  the  God-given  passions  of 
humanity,  but  how  she  may  best  promote  their  free 
and  therefore  orderly  action ;  then,  and  not  till  then, 
will  crime  and  vice  cease  throughout  the  earth,  then 
and  not  till  then  will  every  man  sit  under  his 
own  vine  and  fig-tree  with  none  to  molest  or  make 
him  afraid. 

But  enormous  as  this  Lecture  has  grown,  I  still 
cannot  afford  to  close  it  without  a  few  words  more 
of  practical  illustration. 

You  have  all  been  shocked  by  the  news  of  the 
recent  horrid  murder  in  Boston.  I  need  not  recite 
the  disgusting  particulars.  The  injury  to  the  vic- 
tim himself  is  small,  moreover,  when  compared  with 
that  inflicted  on  his  family  and  dependents,  and  es- 
pecially on  the  family  and  friends  of  the  criminal, 
whomsoever  he  may  prove  to  be. 

I  have  no  opinion,  and  therefore  express  none,  as 
to  the  guilt  or  innocence  of  the  person  actually 
charged  with  this  hideous  outrage.  But  I  wish  you 
for  a  moment  to  suppose  him  guilty,  to  take   for 


THE    PERFECT  LIFE. 


175 


granted  that  the  murder  was  perpetrated  by  him 
under  the  circumstances  and  with  the  provocation 
popularly  alleged.  And  now,  having  done  this,  I 
beg  you  to  notice  two  facts. 

First,  you  will  observe  that  the  crime  grew  out 
of  a  money-relation  between  the  parties.  Pro- 
fessor Webster  having  placed  himself  under  pecu- 
niary obligation  to  Dr.  Parkman,  and  failing  to 
meet  that  obligation,  had  incurred  a  suspicion  of 
dishonesty  in  the  mind  of  the  creditor.  The  smart 
of  this  suspicion  is  said  to  have  been  aggravated  by 
the  creditor's  private  inquiries  and  insinuations  as 
to  the  responsibility  of  the  debtor,  who  thereupon, 
it  is  presumed,  moved  both  by  an  inabihty  to  cancel 
the  obligation  and  by  an  overpowering  sense  of  in- 
sult and  oppression,  seized  an  opportune  moment  and 
dealt  his  creditor  a  treacherous  and  revolting  death. 

Manifestly,  then,  this  crime  grew  out  of  a  purely 
social  relation  between  the  parties — the  relation  of 
debtor  and  creditor.  Had  society  refused  to  authorize 
this  relation  by  giving  every  man  independence  of 
his  neighbor,  the  crime  would  never  have  been 
committed.  It  springs  not  out  of  any  original  or 
innate  hatred  in  one  human  bosom  towards  another; 
but  strictly  out  of  a  false  social  relation  between  the 
parties — -b.  relation  which  makes  every  man  more 


176 


MORALITY    AND 


or  less  dependent  for  the  means  of  his  own  subsist- 
ence upon  the  infirm  will  of  his  brother.  In  strict 
truth,  therefore,  society  itself  is  guilty  of  this  out- 
rage. No  one  claims  that  Prof  Webster  has  any 
native  taste  for  murder,  that  he  would  rather  murder 
men  than  not  murder  them.  If,  then,  he  exhibit  no  a 
priori  preference  or  taste  for  this  mode  of  action,  it  is 
clear  that  his  action  must  have  been  constrained — 
constrained  by  the  vicious  relations  which  society  or- 
ganized between  him  and  his  unfortunate  victim. 

In  the  second  place,  you  will  observe  the  fact  of 
Prof.  Webster's  past  good  repute.  He  had  borne 
an  unblemished  character  till  this  event.  I  believe 
that  he  had  suffered  pecuniary  embarrassments,  but 
it  is  reported  of  him  that  he  was  an  affectionate 
husband  and  father,  a  faithful  friend,  given  to  ele- 
gant hospitality,  an  enthusiastic  promoter  of  science 
and  the  fine  arts,  especially  music,  a  kind  neighbor, 
and  an  orderly  citizen. 

Now,  my  friends,  observe  the  stupidity  of  our 
social  methods.  In  killing  this  man  for  the  offence 
imputed  and  proved,  society  does  not  kill  the  mur- 
derer merely;  it  kills  the  tender  husband  and  father 
as  well,  it  kills  the  friend  of  humane  science,  the 
friefid  of  the  beautiful  arts,  the  hospitable  neighborj 
the  orderly  citizen.    It  blinks  out  of  sight  these  life*- 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  177 

long  characteristics  of  the  subject,  and,  for  one  deed 
of  transient  frenzy,  brands  him  with  the  abhorred 
name  of  murderer.  But  good  God  !  can  this  be 
justice  ?  Does  God  bid  us,  in  kiUing  the  murderer, 
kill  also  the  upright  citizen,  the  man  who  is  estima- 
ble in  all  relations,  not  by  fits  and  starts,  nor  by 
strenuous  efforts,  but  in  the  continuous  tenor  of  his 
life  ?  No ;  let  Him  be  true  and  every  man  a  liar 
rather. 

God  has  no  enmity  to  the  good  husband  and 
parent,  the  good  friend  and  neighbor.  His  enmity 
burns  only  towards  the  murderer,  the  thief,  the  liar, 
the  adulterer ;  these  he  delivers  over  to  an  irrevo- 
cable contempt,  to  an  everlasting  damnation.  They 
are  by  their  very  nature  evanescent  existences,  and 
shall  never  partake  of  his  eternity.  Let  society 
therefore  take  heed  to  itself  how  it  exacts  the  penal- 
ty of  its  violated  bond !  It  deals  with  a  subtler 
judge  than  Shylock  found  in  Portia,  and  one  far 
more  inexorable  to  after  pleas.  If  it  shed  one  drop 
of  innocent  blood,  if,  in  punishing  the  murderer, 
thief,  or  adulterer,  it  harm  to  the  extent  of  one  hair 
the  man  made  in  God's  image,  let  it  be  sure  that  His 
vengeance  will  not  tarry.  Let  it  be  very  sure  that 
He  only  waits  a  fitting  moment  to  break  it  asunder 


178  MORALITY    AND 

and  scatter  it  like  the  stubble  that  passeth  away  by 
the  wind  of  the  wilderness. 

Rely  upon  it,  that  God  loves  man  and  hates  only 
those  things  which  defile  and  obscure  him  ;  hates, 
that  is,  all  those  characters  like  the  murderer  and 
so  forth,  which  humanity  disowns  and  which  belong 
therefore  exclusively  to  an  immature  society,  to 
an  imperfectly-organized  fellowship  among  men. 
These  characters  have  no  inherent  vitality,  have 
only  a  transient  individuahty.  They  do  not  attach 
to  humanity  like  the  poet  or  musician  ;  they  are  a 
remnant  of  the  animal  nature  imprisoned  in  our  so- 
cial institutions,  and  not  quite  refined  into  the  hu- 
man. It  is  society  alone  which  perpetuates  these 
brutal  relations  between  man  and  man,  relations  of 
force,  of  obligatory  courtesy,  which  keep  us  forever 
incredulous  of  any  spontaneous  and  lasting  har- 
mony. 

The  perfect  man  at  his  coming  will  banish  these 
inhuman  characters  from  his  presence  forever,  will 
shut  them  up  to  everlasting  destruction.  How  ?  By 
reforming  the  relations  which  now  generate  them,  by 
re-organizing  society  upon  the  methods  of  science, 
methods  which  shall  completely  reconcile  interest 
and  duty,  self-love  and  charity.  By  putting  away 
these  vicious  relations  and  introducing  better  ones 


THE   PERFECT  LIFE.  179 

in  their  stead,  he,  of  course,  excludes  all  the  ills 
which  legitimately  issue  from  them.  Thus  he 
visits  the  murderer,  thief,  adulterer,  and  so  forth, 
with  everlasting  destruction,  while,  at  the  same 
time,  he  saves  with  an  everlasting  salvation  the 
noble  and  friendly  soul  which  so  long  lay  obscured 
under  these  conditions. 

You  perhaps  think  it  a  fair  objection  to  this  as- 
sertion of  man's  essential  innocence,  that  the  crimi- 
nal does  not  always  hasten  to  confess  his  actual 
guilt,  that  he  oftentimes  refuses  to  confess  it  when 
a  possible  mitigation  of  punishment  might  ensue. 
But  the  circumstance  thus  objected  really  confirms 
the  assertion,  for  it  constitutes  merely  the  form  of 
the  criminal's  protest  against  the  injustice  of  society. 
Every  man  instinctively  affirms  his  essential  inno- 
cence, affirms  that  crime  is  a  pure  imposition  of  his 
social  relations.  He  feels  in  his  inmost  soul  that  he 
is  unimplicated  in  the  abominable  deeds  of  his  body, 
unimphcated  in  the  exact  measure  of  their  abomina- 
tion. He  feels  that  he  himself  is  inwardly  good  and 
amiable  and  worthy,  even  while  these  things  were 
committed.  If  therefore  society  in  dealing  with 
the  criminal  would  observe  this  law  of  conscious- 
ness, if  it  would  say  to  him  not  *'  you  yourself  are 
evil  and  detestable  and  worthy  therefore  to  be  hunted 


ISO  MORALITY    AND 

down  and  killed  like  any  wild  beast,"  but  only 
"  your  deeds  are  evil  and  detestable,  and  to  be  put 
a  stop  to  therefore  at  all  hazards,  even  to  the  taking 
of  your  life,"  there  is  no  criminal  who  would  not 
accept  the  verdict  and  joyfully  give  his  life  a  ransom 
for  his  soul. 

But  society  has  hitherto  been  incapable  of  this 
wisdom.  It  seeks  to  falsify  the  verdict  of  the  in- 
dividual consciousness,  and  to  prove  not  merely  the 
deed,  but  him  the  doer  also,  evil.  It  says  to  him, 
*'  you  have  not  merely  done  an  evil  deed,  but  you 
yourself  are  an  evil  man,  different  from  the  honor- 
able men  who  judge  you,  and  we  shall  therefore 
kill  you  out  of  our  midst  like  any  atrocious  vermin, 
and  your  name  shall  be  an  infamy  to  all  that  derive 
it  from  you."  God's  truth  is  pledged  to  sustain  a 
man  under  such  infernal  calumny  as  this.  Every 
soul  of  man  resents  it  by  a  deathless  divine  instinct, 
by  the  instinct  of  a  righteousness  never  perhaps  re- 
alized till  it  becomes  so  loudly  demanded. 

Accordingly,  rather  than  confess  under  these  cir- 
cumstances that  he  did  the  deed,  rather  than  con- 
fess by  confessing  it  that  he  is  the  miserable  rep- 
tile society  paints  him,  the  criminal  keeps  his  own 
steadfast  counsel,  dies  as  we  say  and  makes  no 
sign.   But  this  signless  death,  my  friends,  is  a  fear- 


THE    PERFECT  LIFE.  181 

ful  sign  for  society.  When  that  poor  wretch  stands 
arrayed  in  hood  and  shroud  under  your  unmelting 
eyes,  when  society  resolves  itself  into  a  bestial  mob 
to  embitter  the  last  moments  of  a  life  which  it  alone 
has  desecrated,  when  the  pale  and  manly  victim 
defies  3'our  Pharisaic  rage  and  dies  as  he  lived 
despising  your  hollow  righteousness,  then  you  may 
indeed  cry  out,  "  Behold  how  the  enemies  of  so- 
ciety perish  ;"  but  in  my  heart  of  hearts  I  believe 
that  you  are  all  the  while  stupidly  provoking  the 
enmity  of  an  imperishable  enemy,  even  God.  all 
truth  and  goodness.  There  is  no  lie  so  damnable 
in  His  sight  as  that  of  man's  essential  depravity,  be- 
cause there  is  none  so  subversive  of  His  own  honor. 
Until  this  lie  be  disavowed  by  society  therefore, 
organically  disavowed ;  until  society,  by  putting 
away  its  present  unequal  methods,  assume  all  guilt 
to  itself  and  justify  every  soul  of  man  ;  God  will 
continue  its  enemy.  The  things  which  are  highly 
esteemed  of  it,  its  priests  and  rulers.  He  will  count 
an  abomination  ;  and  those  whom  it  makes  last,  its 
felons,  its  slaves,  its  harlots.  He  will  make  first, 
ministering  to  them  a  joyful  and  abundant  entrance 
to  His  kingdom. 

Now,  my  friends,  suppose  for  a  moment  that  so- 
ciety should  become  aroused  from  its  unbelief  and 


182  MORALITY    AND 

obedient  to  these  benign  ideas,  so  reverential  towards 
God,  so  full  of  benefaction  to  man.  Do  you  think 
that  the  practical  results  would  be  bad  ?  Let  us  see. 
Suppose  that  society,  animated  by  these  truths, 
should  go  to  the  criminal  whom  we  suppose  to  have 
been  convicted  of  murder,  and  address  him  thus  : 
"  Friend,  we  have  erred,  and  have  come  to  recall  our 
error.  We  are  convinced  that  the  odium  of  murder 
does  not  attach  to  your  soul.  We  are  convinced 
that  you  would  never  have  felt  a  prompting  to  in- 
jure him  who  now  lies  dead  had  we  previously  done 
our  duty  towards  you,  that  is,  had  we  previously 
insured  you  both  that  ample  supply  of  all  your 
natural  and  social  wants,  which  it  is  alike  our  in- 
terest and  duty  to  ensure  all  our  members,  and 
which  would  have  forever  prevented  either  of  you 
falUng  under  the  other's  pbligation.  Failing  thus  in 
our  duty,  we  have  tempted  you  to  mutual  rapacity 
and  injury.  One  of  you  lies  low,  hurried  out  of  na- 
ture in  the  midst  of  health  and  joy ;  to  him  it  is  too 
late  to  make  amends.  But  to  you,  the  less  happy 
survivor,  we  can  at  least  do  justice,  by  assuming 
the  odium  of  3^our  guilt.  We  are  the  really  guilty 
party.  The  inhuman  relations  we  have  organized 
between  you  pronounce  us  the  criminal.  Are  we 
not  accordingly  suffering  the  award  due  to  crime  in 


THE    PERFECT    LIFE.  183 

those  innocent  yet  bleeding  hearts  more  intimately 
connected  with  the  deceased  and  yourself?  Where- 
fore we  do  not  condemn  thee;  go  and  sin  no  more." 
Now,  my  friends,  do  you  conceive  that  if  society 
should  act  with  this  magnanimity,  with  this  truth, 
the  criminal  would  not  melt  into  instant  tender- 
ness ?  Would  he  not  at  once  cry  out  to  this  bene- 
ficent society — "  my  life,  my  all  shall  be  yours.  It 
was  not  the  suffering  that  I  dreaded,  it  was  not  my 
approaching  violent  doom  that  I  contended  against. 
It  was  the  stigma  you  cast  upon  my  private  soul 
that  outraged  me,  the  feeling  tqat  I  was  to  suffer 
unblest  of  God,  unblest  of  man,  unblest  even  of 
that  noble  and  tender  wife  whom  my  deed  has  dis- 
graced, and  of  those  fond  confiding  children  I  have 
so  patiently  reared  to  manhood.  This  was  the 
wormwood  and  the  gall,  that  I  should  die  and  no 
man  say,  God  bless  you,  die  abhorred  of  my  own 
flesh  and  blood.  But  your  magnanimity  restores 
me  to  myself.  It  justifies  my  inmost  loathing  and 
abhorrence  of  this  guilt,  and  restores  me  to  self-re- 
spect, restores  me  to  God.  For  whoso  is  at  peace 
with  his  own  heart  is  at  peace  with  God.  Take 
therefore  the  life  you  have  given.  Use  it  freety,  to 
its  last  gasp  if  occasion  serve.  Can  a  man  value 
bis  body  when  he  possesses  himself  in  God  ?     Try 


184         MORALITY    AND    THE    PERFECT    LIFE. 

me  and  see.  Reconciled  to  myself,  reconciled  to 
God,  rejoicing  by  your  truth  in  a  soul  washed  clean 
from  all  defilement,  rejoicing  for  the  first  time  in 
virgin  innocence  of  soul,  I  abandon  this  bleak  exis- 
tence to  your  service  as  freely  as  ever  saint  upon 
the  verge  of  the  beatific  vision  abandoned  himself 
to  God." 


!f 


/ 


/. 


A   .    ,  .... 


SJ^^P  ,  t  c> 


^\m^CC^       ^      ^  ^  t/v-^v^^ 


.  ^6 


14  -7 


a 


/   I 


\      Q> 


h.^      .-^ 


14  DAY  USE 

HOME  USE 

CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

MAIN  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 
1-month  loans  may  be  renewed  by  calling  642-3405. 
6-month  loans  may  be  recharged  by  bringing  books 

to  Circulation  Desk. 
Renewals  and  recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior 

to  due  date. 

ALL  BOOKS  ARE  SUBJECT  TO  RECALL  7  DAYS 

AFTER  DATE  CHECKED  OUT. 


uiiiiim 

^  ^'  'L  ^ 

.  iNTERUaSAAS'  'jJ^i 

MAR31197r 

1 

-I 


''"'''^r,n,;  ,^^^ 

prp.  r.m     lm;n5'ft:^ 

LI 

(C 

LD21 — A-40m-8,'75 

(S7737I.)  Univt. 


U.  C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


CDM7MS7EflT 


I   ,; 


' 


I  li 


\i 


lie 


A. 


